The Department of Energy (DOE) said over the weekend data acquisition in two petroleum areas in Sulu Sea and Northwest Palawan are nearing completion as the government remains bullish on the oil and gas exploration sector.
“We’re happy to report that renewed activity in acquisition of data in two areas are nearing completion. The first one is about 1,500 square kilometer of 3D data acquired by our contractor Ratio in East Palawan in our Sulu Sea area,” DOE Undersecretary Alessandro Sales said.
Israeli company Ratio Petroleum Ltd. is the operator of petroleum service contract no. 76 in the East Palawan Basin. The SC 76 block is located about 150 kilometers east of Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.
“They [Ratio] completed their survey at the end of April and demobilized from the area in the first week of May. The acquisition vessel then proceeded to Northwest Palawan to do another survey for PNOC-EC [PNOC Exploration Corp.] in service contract 57,” Sales said.
He said the SC 57 survey is about the same size as in East Palawan.
“They will be completing the last shot of that survey and will be in Batangas to demobilize sometime June 20 or June 21,” Sales said.
The DOE awarded SC 57 to state-run PNOC EC on Sept. 15, 2005. It covers a total area of 7,200 sq. km. and about 50 km. northwest off the north-westernmost tip of Busuanga Island.
Meanwhile, Sales said there is no Chinese contractors in the country’s petroleum areas.
“As of now, there’s no Chinese contractors in our upstream. The way DOE runs it really is it’s a commercial arrangement by the contractors. They can apply, they can farm into existing contracts. But at the moment, none of our service contracts have Chinese contractors,” he said.