http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/july/14/yehey/business/20060714bus9.html

CONSUNJI-LED Semirara Mining Corp. (SMC) will push through with its proposed mine-mouth coal plant in Antique and conducts technical scoping to secure environmental clearance.

A top SMC official, who requested anonymity, confirmed that the company and its parent company, DMCI Holdings Inc., are set to build the 200-megawatt mine-mouth coal plant that was last year.

SMC estimates it will spend $200 million for the new plant based on the $1-million per megawatt rule-of-thumb for coal plants. The figure may still increase once the company conducts and completes a feasibility study on the proposal, the official said.

“The company is really serious in the proposal but the project still has to go through with the study to check its viability,” the official said.

The technical scoping the company conducts will determine the area to be covered by the proposed facility. The process is a requirement of the Environment Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources before granting an environment compliance certificate (ECC).

It normally takes a year for a company to secure an ECC.

The SMC official further said that the company wants to use the circulating fluidized bed combustor (CFBC) technology in the new plant to make it more efficient. Most existing coal plants in the country used the pulverized coal technology.

With the expected one-year timetable for the ECC, the SMC official said the plant will be ready by the year 2011 in time for the expected increase in the new capacity of the Visayas grid.
While the planned mine-mouth plant will eat up most of SMC’s coal output from its Paninan mine, it will benefit the SMC and DMCI in that it will boost the generating capacity of DMCI as it continuously ventures into power generation.

In 2005 SMC produced a total of 3.2 million metric tons of coal.

DMCI, meantime, participated in the bidding for the 600-MW Calaca coal-fired plant in Batangas.
–Niel V. Mugas