PASAR to build own power plant

The Philippines’ only copper smelter and refiner wants to build a 200 megawatt coal-fired plant.

Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corporation or PASAR is in talks with three companies for a partnership to build the plant that will serve its power needs in Leyte province in the Visayas region.

Media sources identified the probable partners as GN Power Ltd., Electricity Generating Public Co. Ltd. of Thailand and GDF-Suez.

After choosing its partner, PASAR will conduct a six-month feasibility study. It hopes to hold the ground-breaking for the power plant in the fourth quarter of 2014 and complete the project by 2016.

PASAR wants to build the power plant to lower electricity cost and sell excess power to firms at the Leyte Industrial Development Estate.

The expansion will increase the capacity of PASAR’s refinery to 1.2 million tons of copper concentrate annually from 720,000 tons.