Published
By Myrna M. Velasco
The Department of Energy
(DOE) is going to be on a five-country swing for series of roadshows to woo
global oil giants to invest in the country’s new round of petroleum
contracting.
The markets targeted
for multi-continent investment enticements are Singapore, United States of
America, Canada, United Arab Emirates (in Abu Dhabi) and all the way down to
Argentina.
The Singapore leg will
be this week at the Southeast Asia Petroleum Exploration Society (SEAPEX)
Exploration Conference and will be headed by Energy Assistant Secretary Leonido
J. Pulido III, who will be doing his presentation at the plenary session of the
event. The department will also carry out one-on-one presentations with
interested exploration companies.
Doubts are raised,
however, if this will end up to be a successful strategy for the department
given the ‘relatively domestic issues’ that it cannot even address yet on the
investment policy terrain of the Philippine upstream oil and gas industry.
For one, the DOE cannot
even convince its counterpart agency yet at the Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) to lift the exploration moratorium at the diplomatically-strained areas
within the West Philippine Sea – both agencies are in fact waiting for the
Chinese government’s imprimatur on this.
And given the recent
legal case filed by former government officials, prospects on the resolution of
this concern had gotten even blurrier.
In addition, the energy
department has not been able to secure yet the go-signal of Malacañang on
policy modifications relating to farm-in and farm-out deals of petroleum
service contracts.
These are among the
major worries repeatedly sounded off by investors – and things won’t change
even by global roadshows if the energy officials will not concentrate efforts
on resolving these issues.
Energy Secretary
Alfonso G. Cusi is on his unyielding pitch for ‘Explore, Explore, Explore’ on
the two-pronged tendering system for petroleum blocks under the Philippine
Conventional Energy Contracting Program.
Yet the test of
‘boldness’ of the initially interested companies will be seen next month – at
the scheduled submission of offers on the 14 pre-determined areas in the
country’s petroleum contracting program.
“It is urgent that we
intensify our exploration and development activities. We need to become energy
self-sufficient so we are better protected from international price market
volatilities,” the energy chief said. The turbulent swings of prices in the
world market, particularly the uptrends, have proved punishing to Filipino
consumers who are scampered into a market heavily dependent on oil imports.
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