Business Business News Maibarara geothermal plants need $10M
Maibarara geothermal plants need $10M
- Details
- Published on Monday, 30 April 2012 00:00
By A Web design Company
As much as $10 million will be needed by Maibarara Geothermal Inc. (MGI) for the drilling of two new wells on the 20-megawatt geothermal project in Batangas that will provide more electricity through renewable energy in Luzon, a Department of Energy official said.
Energy Undersecretary Jose Layug said that drilling of a single geothermal well is estimated to cost from $4 million to $5 million.
MGI, a consortium led by listed PetroEnergy Resources Corp., is planning to drill two new geothermal wells in the Maibarara contract area located in Sto. Tomas, Batangas.
“The commitment is to drill two wells next year to determine additional capacity,” Layug said
“It’s 20 megawatts and hopefully it can produce starting 2013 and provide more electricity through renewable energy in the Luzon grid,” he noted.
According to Layug, the Maibarara geothermal power project is the first project under the Renewable Energy Act that went into commercial declaration and the first that the DOE granted declaration of commerciality.
“They found that the resources are available and commercially feasible, and therefore we will now allow them to build, to explore and build the power plant to produce it for power,” Layug said.
Layug said that MGI was given approval by the DOE for commercial development of the steam resources in the Maibarara contract area because it is “not feed-in-tariff (FIT) eligible.”
“Maibarara (does not need) FIT, by law, (it’s not) entitled to FIT. (Those eligible for FIT are) emerging technologies such as solar, run of river hydro, biomass, ocean,” Layug said.
“(They’re not) FIT eligible so there’s no issue about them going commercial because they will sell their power either to a cooperative or to the market,” he added.
Layug noted that the Maibarara project is the first geothermal project that will be operated by a Philippine private company.
