This comes even as electricity demand falls for fourth month in a row
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 19 Feb 09;
ELECTRICITY demand continued to shrink in the past two months as the economy slowed further.
But generating company (genco) Senoko Power will stick with its $750 million plan to re-power its plants and also buy some liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuel.
'Electricity demand growth is normally robust around 4 per cent a year,' Senoko's CEO and president Roy Adair told BT yesterday. 'But in the last quarter of 2008 we started seeing the impact of recession. There has been a significant drop in demand. The bite is quite material.'
Demand in December and January is estimated to have fallen more than 2 per cent year-on-year.
Recent Energy Market Company data showed demand fell 3.2 per cent in October last year and 2.7 per cent in November. This makes it four consecutive months of decline in electricity demand.
Mr Adair said yesterday that despite the cloudy economic outlook, Senoko's new owner - Japanese- French consortium Lion Power - is committed to redeveloping three 30-year- old oil-fired plants into two more efficient gas-fired units.
Lion Power, which comprises four Japanese companies led by Marubeni Corp and French power and water utility giant GDF Suez, announced the plan last October, a month after it bought Senoko Power from Temasek Holdings for about $4 billion.
Mr Adair said Senoko is keeping a close eye on the market situation but 'the re-powering remains a cornerstone of our development plan'.
Once the two new combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants are operational at end-2011, Senoko will have seven such units with total generating capacity of 2,805MW.
Funding is not an issue as Lion Power said last September that it had already secured bank finance for the project.
Mr Adair said Lion Power is in talks with Britain's BG Group - the sole LNG buyer here - on a supply deal.
Senoko Power, near the Causeway, now buys about 230 million standard cu ft of piped gas daily (mscfd) from Malaysia and Indonesia and will need a further 60 mscfd.
Mr Adair said Senoko will be a major user of Singapore's LNG terminal as Lion Power plans to go into LNG trading here once BG's monopoly expires.
This monopoly runs from the second quarter of 2012, when the LNG terminal starts up, until LNG imports build up to three million tonnes a year or 2018, whichever comes first.
BT reported earlier that Tuas Power, now owned by China Huaneng Group, is delaying plans for a $2 billion clean coal/biomass co- generation plant by six to 12 months as potential petrochemical customers on Jurong Island postpone projects.
PowerSeraya, which was bought by Malaysia's YTL Corp, will go ahead with an $800 million co- generation plant project but seems to be holding off on plans for a second desalination plant and a booster plant to extend the reach of its co-generation units to petrochemical customers.
