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APC Group seeks partners for energy ventures |
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Firm to forge farm-in deals for Service Contract 48
By Abigail L. Ho
LISTED FIRM APC GROUP, INC., through subsidiary Aragorn Power and Energy Corp. (Apec), is keen on forming partnerships with foreign firms for the development of its petroleum service contract in the Cagayan Basin.
In an interview with the INQUIRER, APC chair and president Willy Ocier said that by the second half, Apec would concentrate on forging farm-in agreements for Service Contract 48.
“We’ll talk with foreign firms to help us develop the contract. We can retain a 5-percent share and just get royalties,” he said.
SC 48, which was awarded to Apec by the Department of Energy o nFeb. 22, 2005 covers 748,000 hectares of land in the Cagayan Basin.
According to the company’s official website, the Cagayan Basin has been previously explored by Podco, Stanvac, Philodrill Corp., PNOC Exploration Corp., South China Petroleum Resources and Alsons Resources.
“Numerous oil and gas seeps occur in the basin and of the 32 wells drilled there, 15 had varying degrees of oil and/or gas shows,” Apec site stated. “Four wells actually flowed gas to surface and one is presently producing one million cubic feet of gas per day to power a 3-megawatt (MW) generation plant.”
The power plant is owned and operated by PNOC-EC.
The DOE’s Norwegian-sponsored Philippine Petroleum Resource Assessment Project said the basin was estimated to have a resource potential of 400 million barrels of oil equivalent.
To develop SC 48, Ocier said Apec would need “substantial amounts of investments,” which made getting foreign partners the most practical thing for the company to do.
Apart from the petroleum block, he said Apec would also want to develop geothermal resources in Northern Luzon.
It has filed applications with the DOE for two geothermal sites in the Cordilleras.
(Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26 March 2007, page B7)
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