| DIE HARD III |
 |
| Herman Tiu Laurel |
05/14/2012
Last May 9, state-run National Power Corp. (Napocor) completed its
fast-tracked rehabilitation of the Pulangi IV hydroelectric plant in
Bukidnon, allowing it to generate power to its installed capacity of 250
megawatts (MW) from half of that before. That the rehabilitation was
started only mid-April this year at the height of the Mindanao power
crisis shows government’s hurried response to the uproar from
Mindanaoans who have suffered the crippling effects of the long
blackouts — outages that were deemed deliberate.
As a result,
Mindanao’s economy suffered billions in losses, estimated by some to
reach P60 billion, with government’s Power Sector Assets and Liabilities
Management (Psalm) Corp. claiming a loss of up to P15 billion.
To
wit, the estimated power shortfall was anywhere between 100 to 150 MW.
The Pulangi rehab, meanwhile, costing only P7.11 million, has already
restored at least 100 MW of installed electric capacity to Mindanao. The
question is, why didn’t the Department of Energy (DoE) order this rehab
earlier when this new administration took over in 2010? Was it
negligence or plain sabotage?
If Pulangi IV alone had been
maintained properly at such a minimal cost early on, with the rest of
the Agus-Pulangi system also rehabilitated two years prior, there would
not have been any Mindanao power crisis to speak of.
Instead, what
BS Aquino III, his DoE officials, as well as politicians such as Sen.
Serge Osmeña have repeatedly claimed for the past two years was that a
power crisis in Mindanao can only be solved by installing new coal-fired
and other power plants.
Sen. Edgardo Angara, author of the RE
(Renewable Energy) law in turn has repeatedly claimed that solar and
wind power for Mindanao is the answer, hiding the fact that his RE law
charges P20 per kilowatt-hour (kwh) for solar and wind, compared to
hydro’s P2 per kwh.
In all, these officials are acting more as
lobbyists, with Osmeña calling for the privatization of Agus-Pulangi and
other hydroelectric resources on behalf of the oligarchs with DoE
officials siding with the coal and mining lobby; and with Angara rooting
for his RE program in favor of foreign energy companies that would have
to be in partnership with the usual suspects, i.e. the power oligarchs,
who are already in RE projects.
What is made clear from these
historical facts is that national policy on this matter has been ruled
solely by lobby interests working through the entire political
structure. Not a single one of these officials have acted with
responsibility and concern for the genuine interest of the people of
Mindanao and the nation as a whole; thus, leading to the situation today
that has produced the “highest power cost in Asia” devastating our
industries and quality of life.
Last Saturday evening, on our
Destiny Cable GNN program, Jojo Borja of Iligan Light and Power and
lawyer Homobono Adaza reported on how the Energy Regulatory Commission
(ERC) is again trying to pull a fast one on the public.
As we
wrote in this space last week, they recounted how notices of a crucial
ERC hearing on the case of the Maximum Allowable Price (MAP) petition of
the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) arrived suspiciously late — on a
Sunday afternoon at legal counsel Adaza’s residence, less than a day
before the hearing, and, for petitioner Borja, on the Friday before the
Monday hearing.
Despite the many underhanded moves, we’re glad
that the Meralco petition was postponed anew, saving the power firm’s 6
million consumers from an early approval of a very onerous power rate
base that is 100 percent over what the company should be charging for
distribution. The present rate, by the way, is based on what Borja says
are several instances of Meralco equipment overpricing by as much as 900
percent!
Mang Naro Lualhati, octogenarian consumer activist, who
works in cooperation with the team of Borja, Adaza, Butch Junia, Alan
Paguia, Ferdie Pasion, and many others, laid the basis for the case that
Borja and Adaza are now locking horns with Meralco over at the Court of
Appeals (CA); thus, constraining the ERC from trying to resolve
Meralco’s petition in its sala at this time.
Furthermore, Lualhati
has filed a motion for reconsideration on the ERC’s dismissal of his
opposition to Meralco’s MAP of around P1.60/kwh, which, according to the
accountant-oppositor — aided by Borja’s facts, figures, and documents —
should only be P0.90/kwh.
If Lualhati, Borja, et al. will prevail
in this epic struggle, they can win for Meralco customers as much as 50
percent of the distribution charges they pay, not including several
more if other issues, such as the Performance Based Regulation scheme
and its 17 percent rate of return vs the old Return-on-Rate Base’s 12
percent, are eventually dealt with and overturned.
More
importantly, another fact was highlighted in our program that should
make everyone stop and take the predatory power victimization of
millions of Filipinos very seriously. Says Borja, “To this day, Iligan
Light and Power is charging only P5.50 per kwh retail on a customer base
of 60,000 electricity connections while Meralco is charging P11 to P12
per kwh on a customer base of 6 million electricity connections.”
Whatever
happened to the principle of “economies-of-scale,” where the bigger the
market and operation of an enterprise, the lower its prices for
products and services should be? Well, given that the scale of the
losses from the Mindanao power crisis, amounting to billions of pesos,
was solved by a mere P7.11-million rehab project, we should know that
these power pirates are always up to no good.
(Tune in to 1098AM,
dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.;
watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15
to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., this May 12 on “Malampaya plunder”
with Rep. Neri Colmenares; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for
our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120514com5.html
