Only winners in Mindanao crisis are power firms—Casiño

Teodoro Casiño INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The private power companies have won out in the Mindanao power crisis situation now that the Department of Energy (DOE) has ordered the electric cooperatives on the island to buy additional, more expensive, power from them, party-list Representative Teodoro Casiño (Bayan Muna) said Wednesday.

“It appears that there is enough power supply in Mindanao. The problem is that it is too expensive so the power distributors were not buying for fear of going bankrupt,” Casiño said.

“This is what the electric cooperatives have been trying to prevent but the DOE was able to push for it with the circular. The choice was reduced to having higher power rates or no electricity at all,” he said.

The DOE announced the other day that it had eased the rotating power blackouts in Mindanao largely by ordering the electric cooperatives there to source additional power, even from more expensive diesel-fired plants.

Refusal of cooperatives

Energy officials earlier said the reason for the rotating power blackouts was the refusal of the cooperatives to buy additional power from the private energy producers in the face of the diminished capacity of their preferred source, the cheap hydropower plants.

Casiño and several lawmakers, however, have accused private power producers of creating an artificial energy shortage in Mindanao to force businesses and residents there to bite the bullet and buy power at whatever cost just to ensure a steady electricity supply for their homes and enterprises.

Casiño described the DOE’s Circular 2012–03-0004, which directs electric cooperatives to enter into supply contracts with private power plants for additional power, as a mere stopgap measure which addresses the blackouts but not the long-term affordability of power in the region.

He suggested that instead of using the expensive power of the operators of oil-fired barges, like the Aboitiz-owned Therma Marine, as an expensive ancillary power, the government should take over these power plants and add them to the national grid.

Cheaper electricity

He said the Constitution allowed the government to temporarily take over the power barges to lower prices and enable power distributors to buy cheaper electricity during a crisis.

Casiño claimed that the privatization of power in Mindanao had led to higher electricity rates as the now privately owned National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, which operates the country’s power transmission network, has entered into an ancillary services procurement agreement with Therma Marine involving two privatized barges, Power Barges 117 and 118.

Since then, Casiño said power rates have soared in the past two years, from P49.70 per kilowatt hour (kWh) per month in 2009 to P560 per kWh per month in 2010  and to P606 per kWh per month last year.

He claimed that Therma Marine had been selling additional power to the Mindanao grid at a more prohibitive rate than when the power barges were still being used as base load plants.