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The consortium led by an Australia-based firm
announced on Monday that it is set to conduct drilling activities in
the service contract (SC) area covering the Marantao field off the
west coast of Palawan within the next two years.
In a disclosure to the Philippine
Stock Exchange, Trans Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. (TA Oil)
said that the SC 55 consortium has until August 5, 2010 to drill an
exploratory well as part of its development program for the block.
TA Oil, a unit of Philippine
Investment-Management, Inc. (PHINMA), is primarily engaged in power
generation, oil and mineral exploration, exploitation and
production. At present, the company is represented in four areas in
the upstream oil and gas industry, covering more than 1.5 million
hectares
TA Oil controls a 15-percent
stake in SC 55 while NorAsian Energy has an 85-percent working
interest in the consortium. The latter is a joint venture between
Australia’s Otto Energy and AustralAsian Energy Ltd.
The consortium has just recently
completed 976 kilometers of 2D seismic data acquisition in the
block, which contains the highly prospective Marantao field.
Prelimenary studies on the field
conducted by the group found that it may contain 1.812 trillion
cubic feet (tcf) of gas and up to 567 million barrels of oil.
TA Oil earlier said that in case
only oil is found in the reservoir, prospective resource may range
from 320 million to 2.682 billion barrels. On the other hand, if the
field only contains gas, then it has a prospective resource range
from 721 billion cubic feet to 5.6 tcf.
In contrast, the Malampaya, the
country’s largest natural gas field to date, is estimated to
contain 3.7 tcf, which fuel three power plants with a combined
capacity of 2,700 megawatts and 25 million to 40 million barrels of
untapped oil reserves.
TA Oil’s shares closed higher
yesterday to P1.04 from P1.02.
--Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
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