26 gas, coal deals to attract $168-m investment

Manila Standard Today
By Othel V. Campos | May. 10, 2014 at 12:01am

The government expects to attract at least $168.5 million worth of investments for the development of 26 new gas and coal contracts.

The Energy Department said combined investments in the gas and coal sector were expected to reach $168.5 billion over the next seven years, once the contracts under the fifth Philippine Energy Contracting Round were awarded to winning bidders.

The department said it expected at least $165 million in investments in 11 petroleum contract areas and at least $3.5 million in 15 coal areas.

“The contracts are basically exploratory. They are not supposed to go into production unless armed with proven resource estimate that will cost billions of dollars already,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said in a news briefing coinciding with the launch of PECR-5 at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in Makati City.

The agency said 12 contract areas are located offshore Sulu and one offshore Palawan.

Initial assessment of the Energy Department showed most petroleum basins within the service areas were either shallow or deep-seated.

“There’s only one way to find out the nature of these gas-prone areas and that is to dig further,” said Petilla.

He cited the intense interest of companies that nominated the service areas, including Mitra Energy Ltd. of Malaysia and Gas2Grid Ltd. of Malaysia.

Winning bids for petroleum contracts will be awarded sometime in February 2015 while coal contracts will be awarded in September 2014.

All nationalities including Chinese are welcome to participate in the process, he said.

Petilla said none of the service contracts were being claimed by other countries but the department was prepared to address the issue before the United Nations Law of the Sea, should a country dispute the Philippine claim on 26 PECR-5 areas.

The department earlier dropped three service areas that could be under the upcoming Bangsamoro autonomous government.

“We came out after the framework has been put in place. The bidding for the three areas will simply be postponed until the Bangsamoro law is passed,” Petilla said. source