A consumer group has bewailed giant San Miguel Corp., which just recently attained the distinction of being the country’s biggest energy provider, for wanting to have its cake and eat it, too.

The Power for People Coalition (P4P) condemned SMC’s efforts to add P34 billion to consumers’ electricity bills as it seeks to recover costs brought about by “change in circumstance” from its supply deal with Meralco.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is now reviewing the petitions of Sual Power Inc. (SPI) and South Premiere Power Corp. (SPPC), SMC’s power units, to recover a total of P34 billion through price adjustments under its Power Supply Agreements (PSAs) with Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).

The PSA, from the outset, was based on a straight pricing scheme that did not allow adjustment in electricity charges.

SPPC owns and operates the 1,200-megawatt Ilijan natural gas-fired power plant in Batangas City while SPI was the former San Miguel Electricity Corp. that operates the country’s largest coal plant in Sual, Pangasinan.

The legal dispute stems from the ERC’s 2022 denial of a temporary price adjustment request by SPI and SPPC to recover fuel costs.

After the denial, the companies petitioned the Court of Appeals (CA) in November 2022. The court issued a temporary restraining order for SPPC and later consolidated SPI’s case. 

In January 2023, the Court granted a preliminary injunction, upheld in April.

In June 2023, the CA ruled in favor of SPI and SPPC, annulling the ERC’s denial and approving the price adjustment. However, the ERC appealed the decision to the SC. 

While the dispute was on appeal, the two SMC units won the bid for emergency PSAs that effectively substituted the straight-pricing contract with another based on terms favorable to the conglomerate.

Despite wrangling a PSA based on the terms it preferred, the SMC units wanted to obtain refunds from the contract it violated. 

During the Energy Efficiency Day forum on Thursday, ERC chairperson and CEO Monalisa Dimalanta confirmed that SMC’s energy units filed two motions to charge consumers on the soured PSAs.

SMC filed two petitions, the first seeking P5 billion covering March to May 2022, and the second amounting to P29 billion for July to December 2022.

“The P34 billion SMC is seeking will wipe out the already paltry P19 billion refund that consumers expect to receive as announced last week. It’s appalling to see them try and burden consumers with this ridiculous amount of money, especially when the computation itself is unverified,” Gerry Arances, convenor of P4P, said.