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Philippines to offer sites for petroleum exploration

The Philippines will offer "promising sites" of potential oil, coal and geothermal resources to local and foreign investors in the face of rising oil prices, the energy department said yesterday.

"With oil rapidly depleting and energy demand continuously rising, we are intensifying our search for new energy resources," Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said in a statement.

He said the government would be offering "highly prospective areas for petroleum, geothermal and coal exploration and development" to local and foreign firms in exploration and production, as well as distribution and refining.

This would include four petroleum contract areas covering a total of 54,000km2 in the waters off the western island of Palawan and in the Sulu Sea basin east of Palawan.

For geothermal development, the department will be offering 11 areas for exploration, development and utilization in the northern Philippines and the central and southern islands.

Polillo Island and Tagkawayan town, near Manila; Calatrava, Candoni and Bayawan in central Negros island; and Malangas, Gigaquit and the Tandag-Tago-Lianga-Bislig basin offer potential coal resources of 741 million tonnes, it said.

The Energy Department will open a special data room over the next four weeks to help investors evaluate the potential of the resources being offered.

Interested parties have until Nov. 29 to submit bids, the department added.

Under a previous contracting round this month, a consortium of Australia's BHP Billiton Petroleum, Amerada Hess, Unocal and Sandakan Oil, won a contract for seven-year exploration programs for oil and gas in the Sulu Sea.

Studies have said that the Philippines could have potential oil resources of about 9 billion barrels of oil.
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