Oil Exploration and Industry Briefing

The Philippine Stock Exchange and Petron Corporation presented an Oil Exploration Industry Briefing today (March 28, 2007 - 3 pm) at the Trading Floor of the PSE Centre, in Ortigas.

The speakers included ;
Mr. Rafael del Pilar - Pres, PNOC -Exploration Corporation whose topic was "The Business of Exploring for Oil and Gas"
and Dir. Resty G. Taganas Jr. - OIC, Energy Resource Development Bureau, Department of Energy who talked on "Oil and Gas Exploration in the Philippines"

The discussions included the basics regarding Petroleum, including its formation and a whole technicals and terminologies regarding the exploration cycle.



Some things i learned:

2/3 of the world's energy sources are from petroleum.

The Philippines gets 46% of its energy requirements from petroleum.

The Philippines consumes 325,000 BOPD (Barrels of Petroleum per day) and 13,000 BOPD is produced locally.

Proven Oil reserves by Geographic regions (as of Jan 1, 2006) in billions of barrels
Middle East 743
North America 213
Central Ameria 103
Africa 103
Eurasia 79
Asia 36
Europe 15
Total 1.293 billion barrels

OPEC countries 901.67 million barrels
Non OPEC 390.9 million barrels


There are 16 sedimentary basins in the Philippines (worldwide, there are about 600). A sedimentary basin are large areas of thick sedimentary rocks which tend to have large petroleum deposits.

Cagayan
Ilocos
West Luzon
Central Luzon
Bicol Shelf - Lamon Bay
South East Luzon
Iloilo - West Masbate
Visayan
Agusan - Davao
Cotabato
Sulu Sea
Reed Bank
Northwest Palawan
Mindoro - Cuyo platform
East Palawan
South west Palawan

Of the 16 sedimentary basins in the Philippines, twelve have good prospects to have oil deposits. So far, only the North West Palawan basin is producing significant quantities

In terms of profitability in Oil exploration, investors can find it worthwhile investing in the Philippines.
Using profits in producing 25 million barrels in Ireland as a benchmark, the Philippines ranks second and would need to produce only 40 million barrels to reach the same profit level. Compare this to Indonesia which needs to produce 144 million barrels, China 46 million and Gabon 75 million barrels.

By May this year, 9 areas are up for bidding for exploration companies.



Source: My scribbled notes which needed a lot of decoding and interpretation