The Department of Energy is set to endorse to the Office of the President the approval of the first country’s first hydrogen service contracts for exploration and development.
“Well, that’s proceeding. But then the service contracts have to be submitted to the Office of the President for approval. So I don’t want, again, to preempt the Office of the President from acting on it,” Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said at the sidelines of the Pilipinas Conference 2024.
“And so, we will make the announcements when the President approved the same,” Lotilla said.
The DOE offered two pre-determined areas for native hydrogen exploration adjacent to the northern portion of the Zambales Ophiolite Complex and the western portion of Central Luzon.
PDA-PH-1 in the provinces of Zambales and Pangasinan covers some 134,096 hectares, while PDA-PH-2 in the same provinces covers 96,439 hectares.
Lotilla did not give more details, saying it is up for “announcement, but they already had their deadlines.”
Under the 2024 Philippine Bid Round, the DOE received five applications for service contracts for native hydrogen exploration, specifically, three for PDA-PH-1 and two for PDA-PH-2.
These applications also passed the completeness check and are eligible for further substantive evaluation.
The comprehensive legal, technical and financial evaluation of all qualified applications is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2024.
The highest-ranking applicants from the evaluation will be endorsed to the Office of the President.
DOE Undersecretary Alessandro Sales said earlier the DOE would select applicants who could demonstrate a good understanding of the possible resource potential of these areas and would carry out a work program to efficiently map and test its potential.
“We were pleasantly surprised at the level of interest with our areas we are bidding out for hydrogen exploration. There were numerous companies from Australia, Europe and North America that have expressed their interest to participate in bidding for these hydrogen contracts,” Sales said.
“These hydrogen contracts are in fact novel in today’s world because apparently, it’s only the Philippines that has bid an area purposely for hydrogen exploration,” he said.
The DOE opened the bid round for hydrogen exploration in February.
“We invite local and foreign investors to be our partners in achieving energy security and self-sufficiency in the region and the entire Philippines, “ Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said.
