article in manila standard

hi guys

interesting article in Manila Standard (today 3/9/05)

doesn't have any relevance to Nido (yet..??), but thought you might like a read.

PNOC: 3rd party may get Malampaya oil job
By Alena Mae S. Flores

A new service contract to develop the Malampaya oil rim and generate up to $2 billion for the economy may be issued to a third party, the state-owned Philippine National Oil Co. said yesterday.

“The Department of Energy has made certain moves to finally settle with the operator what it wants to do. I would expect maybe next week, there might be some critical development. It could be given to a third party through a service contract,” PNOC president Eduardo Mañalac told reporters in a briefing.

PNOC-Exploration Corp., the exploration subsidiary of PNOC, is a member of the consortium holding Service Contract 38. PNOC has a 10 percent stake with Shell Exploration B.V. and Chevron-Texaco holding 45 percent each.

Mañalac said the DoE would most likely give the project to a third party interested in developing the oil rim.

However, he said the department must settle first the issue of the indemnity clause.

“If (the department and the consortium) agree the indemnity needs to be paid, no one will develop it.”

Spex, which has the option to enter into joint ventures, had looked at the option of asking other companies to participate in the Malampaya oil development.

Mañalac said PNOC-EC was willing to develop the Malampaya oil rim if the government wants it to do so.

The government has been pushing the Malampaya consortium to develop the oil rim in the wake of the unprecedented surge of oil prices in the world market.

“From the PNOC side, we’re prepared. We’re ready to accept if DoE will assign the development of the oil rim to us. We have to take it,” he said.

Mañalac said the Malampaya reserves, estimated at between 25 million to 40 million barrels of oil, is something that “the country badly needs.”

The Malampaya oil rim is a 56-meter thick oil zone that occurs right below the 600-meter thick gas cap.

The oil rim was initially discovered with the drilling of Malampaya-1 well in 1991. It was considered at the onset a separate development from the much larger natural gas reserves.