The Malampaya natural gas platform project in northwest Palawan will undergo maintenance works for two days in the second half of the year, the Energy Department said Wednesday.
Energy Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella told reporters the planned Malampaya maintenance would be conducted on July 15 to 16. He assured that power supply would remain stable during the period.
Fuentebella said the two-day maintenance works during that weekend was in preparation for the scheduled pigging in August of the 504-kilometer subsea pipeline which connects the offshore platform to the onshore gas plant in Batangas.
The “pigging” procedure also intends to eliminate accumulated deposits, which affect the overall productivity of the facility, he said.
The pigging process, which was named after “pigs” or devices and instruments used for the method, will clean the pipeline which originates from the Malampaya platform.
Fuentebella said that during the two-day shutdown in July, one unit of Sta. Rita (250 megawatts) would not be supplied with natural gas for two days and another unit of Sta. Rita (250 MW) was expected to be on planned shutdown.
“Schedules of this maintenance work were timed to coincide with planned shutdowns of First Gas; also these are weekends so demand for power is anticipated to be low,” Fuentebella said.
