Hunton & Williams Advises on 500 MW San Buenaventura Power Project in the Philippines, Which Readies for Construction Commencement

Hunton & Williams LLP is serving as project counsel to San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co. (SBPL), a joint venture between MERALCO PowerGen Corporation, the power generation subsidiary of Manila Electric Company (PSE: MER), the largest distribution utility in the Philippines, and New Growth, B.V., the international investment arm of Thailand’s Electricity Generating Public Co. Ltd. (EGCO) (SET: EGCO), in completing project agreements and assisting with securing a PHP42.15 billion (approximately USD890M) loan from a consortium of Asian-based banks to fund the debt portion of the construction and other project costs of SBPL’s 500-megawatt gross coal-fired power plant to be situated in Mauban, Quezon.

The project debt funding is the largest all-peso project finance construction term debt facility in the country to-date. The plant is expected to begin operations in the first half of 2019. The plant, to be constructed in a remote area on the Pacific coast of Luzon Island, will be the first in the Philippines to utilize higher efficiency supercritical boiler technology and will use low sulphur coals sourced from Indonesia. A consortium of Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd. and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation will design, engineer, and construct the plant. The plant will be situated near the existing 500 MW plant of Quezon Power (Philippines), Limited Co., for which Hunton & Williams has acted since 1997.

The Asia-based Hunton & Williams team was led by James P. Bradley and Edward Koehler, with key support from Chumbhot Plangtrakul, Peter Francis Schultz, Suwit Kongkiatkamon, Dollapan Sakulpanich, Nat-Apsorn Lertdhirakul, Nicholas Altstadt, and Jitranut Narkmai.

Hunton & Williams provide comprehensive finance, development and infrastructure counsel at every step of a project, from initial conception through obtaining regulatory approvals; drafting, documenting and negotiating of joint venture, power-purchase and other agreements, intergovernmental arrangements and guidance on construction, operational and management issues. We have represented project lenders, investors, developers, sponsors, and governments throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States on project matters for more than 20 years. We also have worked extensively with governments and their parastatals, using financing and other programs provided by the World Bank and other governmental, multinational, multilateral and bilateral export credit, risk insurance and lending agencies.