LNGPH spending P6 billion for LNG storage expansion

MANILA, Philippines — LNGPH, the multibillion-dollar venture of tycoons Manuel V. Pangilinan, Sabin Aboitiz and Ramon Ang, is looking to spend roughly P6 billion to expand its liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage capacity.

LNGPH president and CEO Yari Miralao said the company plans to commission a third onshore storage tank with a capacity of 100,000 to 180,000 cubic meters, enough to store up to 18 days’ worth of LNG supply.

“The construction period is anywhere from 36 to 42 months,” Miralao said in a recent interview.

LNGPH recently commissioned two full-containment LNG storage tanks, each with a capacity of 60,000 cubic meters, at its Ilijan facility in Batangas.

The tanks are the first large-scale onshore LNG storage facilities in the country and can each hold around five and a half days’ worth of supply.

The company also charters a floating storage unit from Emirati state-owned oil and gas firm ADNOC that can store around 12 days’ worth of stocks.

With the planned third onshore tank, Miralao wants to expand LNGPH’s total storage capacity to more than a month’s worth of supply.

“We’re now in this contemplative period, and the thought process now is to start moving tanks onshore because that’s a more natural solution as opposed to these FSRUs (floating storage and regasification units),” he said.

LNGPH is a joint venture of Pangilinan’s Meralco PowerGen Corp., Aboitiz-owned Therma Natgas Power Inc. and Ang-led San Miguel Global Power Holdings Corp.

It currently operates gas-fired power plants in Batangas with a combined capacity of at least 2,500 megawatts. These facilities account for about 18 percent of Luzon’s electricity demand, latest company data show.

Excellent Energy Resources Inc., a subsidiary of LNGPH, is among the 10 companies that have passed the pre-qualification stage for the country’s first mid-merit natural gas auction.

The auction aims to attract 3.8 gigawatts of natural gas-fired capacity, encouraging investments in additional mid-merit power plants to help meet the country’s growing electricity demand.

Mid-merit plants play a critical role in keeping the power grid stable by bridging the gap between always-on baseload generation and peak-demand sources.