Thursday, September 13, 2012

Energy to rebid coal, oil blocks


By Alena Mae S. Flores | Posted on September 13, 2012 | 12:01am

Manila Standard Today
The Energy Department will conduct the next auction for petroleum and coal exploration blocks next year to further boost the country’s energy security requirements, a government official said Wednesday.
Energy Undersecretary Jay Layug said the department planned to include petroleum and coal exploration areas that did not receive bids in the previous bidding rounds.
“We plan to do a bidding again for those blocks that have not received any bids for both coal and petroleum,” Layug said. Four out of the 15 petroleum exploration blocks offered to investors in the last round failed to attract bids.
“We need to work on more data on these areas because based on our assessment, the reason why these four areas did not receive any bids is the lack of data,” Layug said.
Ten coal areas out of 38 also did not receive bids during this year’s contracting round for coal.
“For coal, we offered 38 prospective areas and we received a total of 69 bids for 28 of the 38 areas,” he said.
The Energy Department has not awarded any service contract during the fourth round of bidding pending government’s evaluation.
Preparations for the fourth bidding round started in 2011 but actual bidding was conducted only this year.
Layug said the bidding rounds would be held every two years.    source

No comments:

Post a Comment