President Marcos Voices Concern On NGCP Transmission Lines

President Marcos has voiced his concern over the lack of transmission lines being built by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) during a meeting with business leaders involved in energy in Brunei Darussalam.

The lack of transmission lines has been a significant source of problems between local government units and the NGCP. I Photo: Judgefloro Wikimedia Commons

The lack of transmission lines has been a significant source of problems between local government units and the NGCP, causing considerable suffering for residents affected by power outages due to the delay in building transmission lines.

“Our transmission system has fallen behind in terms of development and their contractual obligations to the government in terms of building additional transmission lines,” the President said.

The President added, “We are working very hard on that,” suggesting the possibility of the sovereign wealth fund getting involved in the NGCP by investing in the company.

“I think we’ve come up with some solutions with the sovereign fund getting involved in that. So we hope to put additional capital into the system so that we can accelerate the production and installation of the towers and transmission lines,” he added.

The Chief Executive also invited business leaders in the energy sector in Brunei, where he highlighted the Philippine government’s efforts to develop other sources of energy and minimize the use of fossil fuels.

“We now add to this the transformation from fossil fuels to renewables, which is, I think, something that everyone is dealing with,” President Marcos said.

“The Philippines is now trying to transform our whole energy system from production to transmission to distribution,” he added.

In previous years, the President said, the energy sector was divided into three parts: production, transmission, and distribution at the local level. “That’s why we tried to open up some sources. We have our own source, but we need to further develop and explore some of the potential gas fuels in the Philippines,” he said.

The President noted there are “geopolitical concerns” to consider, as some of the significant gas and oil deposits are located in “conflict areas” of the West Philippine Sea.

“That’s why we are trying to diversify our suppliers. Hopefully, we take to heart the lessons we learned during the pandemic when supply chains were shown to be much more vulnerable than we had imagined,” he said.