By Sudarshan Varadhan and Florence Tan
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Thailand is yet to finalise terms of an extension to a multilateral deal with Singapore to import hydropower from Laos through Malaysia and Thailand, a senior Thai government official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Singapore’s Energy Markets Authority (EMA) said last month it would double the capacity of electricity traded as a part of the second phase of the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS) through additional supply from Malaysia.
“Singapore have agreement with Malaysia, but for Thailand … we’re still in discussion within our country with the agencies,” Sompop Pattanariyankool, Thailand’s deputy permanent energy secretary said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference.
Pattanariyankool did not give specifics, and said the “whole thing is in the process of discussion.”
Singapore’s EMA did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
Grid interconnection is widely seen as a key solution to cut southeast Asia’s growing reliance on fossil fuels for power generation, and EMA called the first-of-its-kind multilateral deal in the region “historic” when it was signed in 2022.
Reuters reported in July that Singapore had yet to sign a renewal deal with Thailand and Malaysia due to disagreement over the quantity of power to be purchased, as both countries were asking Singapore to guarantee the purchase of a fixed amount of electricity to cover transmission costs.
Since then, Malaysia has agreed to directly supply power to Singapore through the LTMS corridor. The chief executive of Malaysia’s national utility confirmed on Tuesday that it had started exporting power to Singapore.
“(As a) part of the LTMS, we have the MS version of it, which is Malaysia, Singapore, and this is where the nations do business-to-business collaboration,” Jalaluddin Bin Megat Hassan, president and chief executive officer of Tenaga Nasional, said on the sidelines of the same event.
“Happy to share that it started last month.”
However, it was not clear how much power will be exported from Laos via Thailand as a part of the second phase of the LTMS project as Thailand has yet to agree with the terms.
Singapore utilised nearly 40% of its contracted capacity during the first nine months after the first phase of the LTMS became operational in July 2022, according to data from energy think-tank Ember.
But as global natural gas prices plunged from record highs, power imports from Laos fell to nearly zero in the fifteen months that followed, Ember data showed.
(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan and Florence Tan; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
