SMC ready to break ground for $20-B refinery this year

MANILA, Philippines - Petron Corp. may start work on its new oil refinery in six months, its president and CEO Ramon Ang said.

“We hope to be able to break ground in the next six months,” Ang told reporters after the annual stockholders meeting of diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp. Tuesday.

Ang said Petron’s new refinery would have an investment of $15 billion to $20 billion and a capacity of 250,000 barrels per day.

He said the company is in talks with two foreign partners for the project.

Asked about the site of the refinery, Ang said this would be “somewhere in the south.”

“Petron is already in the north. You don’t want to put your eggs all in one basket,” Ang said.

He said the new oil refinery would need at least 1,000 hectares and a deep sea port.

On top of this, Petron plans to spend $500 million on expanding its Bataan refinery to increase capacity to 270,000 barrels per day from the current 180,000.

The Petron Bataan refinery is the country’s most advanced integrated oil refining and petrochemicals complex, producing a full range of world-class petroleum products including gasoline, LPG, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, and petrochemical feedstocks - benzene, toluene, mixed xylene and propylene.

Ang said the idea is to have an integrated petrochemical manufacturing facility to cater to “strong domestic demand.”

There are also plans to expand the refinery in Malaysia to 150,000 barrels per day from 80,000 barrels.

In Malaysia, Petron operates the Port Dickson Refinery, seven storage facilities and about 580 service stations. The complex is equipped with a crude distillation unit, a naphtha hydro treating unit, two semi-regeneration reformer units, and a kerosene hydro treating unit.

It is further supported by amenities such as waste-water treatment facilities, steam generator, cooling water plant, flare and safety relieving unit, crude storage tanks, refined petroleum products storage tanks, as well as spheres for liquefied petroleum gas storage.

In the first quarter of the year, Petron reported a net income of P5.6 billion, double the P2.8 billion posted in the same period last year.

Combined volumes from the Philippines and Malaysia went up three percent to 26.2 million barrels during the period.