PEDC execs won’t admit foul odor came from plant
Executives of Panay Energy Development Corp., operator of the 164-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Brgy. Ingore, La Paz District in Iloilo City, yesterday refused to admit the foul odor that downed residents, including school children, in the area came from their facility.
“We are not admitting that it came from the plant,” Mathias Marcira, PEDC project manager, said in a press comference at the Iloilo Business Hotel.
His colleague Anna Medina, corporate communications manager of the Global Business Power Corp., parent firm of PEDC, said it is too early to tell where the foul odor originated because the incident is still under investigation.
“As this point, we are not admitting to anything. We are trying to find out what is the root cause of the smell and smoke that were reported,” Medina said.
Residents of Ingore complained about the bad odor late last week.
Based on media reports, the hardest hit was the nearby Brgy. Ticud, where 35 residents initially and later 69 of them, complained of feeling ill. One resident fainted.
In its press statement, PEDC said that concurrent to “its internal investigation, a Multipartite Monitoring Team was convened for a parallel yet independent investigation on whether or not the foul odor complaint of by some residents was indeed due to the test firing or from other extraneous sources not related to the testing of the power plant.”
“Definitely, we, the PEDC management, are committed to the environment and we are also committed to finding out the root cause of the foul odor. We would be cooperating with the investigating team,” Medina said.
She said the project, consisting of two 82-MW units, is still on testing and commissioning stage under the PEDC contractor, Formosa Heavy Industries Inc.
FHI is also a member of the GBPC consortium, along with Metrobank Group, Aboitiz Power Corp., and Vivant Energy Corp.
Medina said PEDC has instructed FHI to conduct a thorough and complete investigation of its construction methods – the plant itself and the process it instituted during the test-firing held between September 4 and 7.
For the FHI, which has built numerous coal-fired power plants around the world, test-firing is a routine process prior to the ultimate operation of the plant.
Engr. Jeffrey Chen, commissioning team leader of FHI, said this is the first time they have received complaints of foul odor said to have come from the plant.
“I don’t know why there is such a complaint. Since we started the boiler firing until now – like in Taiwan, mainland China, and even in other parts of the country – we never heard such complaints,” he said.
“Until now, we still don’t know where this came from. That’s why, we need to find the source of the foul odor,” he added.
Henry Alcalde, PEDC vice president for Panay operations, said they started testing the plant’s burners on September 4 to determine if these were functioning well. A test was again made on September 9.
The first steam blowing was conducted on September 11. It was done for a few hours and then it resumed September 13 until September 16.
“The steam blowing is just a process of cleaning the tube. There are some solid materials that might be detrimental to the turbine blades. This has to be removed as a standard practice prior to the operation of the turbine,” he said.
As such, Alcalde said it is also a puzzle to them that people complained to have smelled something like burned rubber, burned cable insulation, burned herbal plant, or other unexplainable odors during the test firing and steam blowing.
“We received different complaints, we’re at a loss. With the investigation, we hope to find the possible sources of the complaint,” he added.*with reports from NLG
