DOE reschedules contracting round

MANILA, Philippines -  The Department of Energy (DOE) has rescheduled the Philippine Energy Contracting Round (PECR) 5 for coal areas to December this year, a ranking DOE official said.

Energy Undersecretary Jay Layug said the decision to hold the coal contracting round in the latter part of this year instead of this month would provide the DOE more time to identify prospective areas to be covered under the PECR 5.

“For coal PECR, we have moved it to December as we are still awaiting confirmation on some areas to be offered,” Layug said.

The DOE is eyeing to bid out at least five areas, mostly in Mindanao, under this contracting round.

“So far, we have only five areas but it’s not yet final. We are looking at additional five more (but) we need a final go-signal from the Environment Department so there will be no overlap,” the DOE official said.

Earlier, the DOE said among the possible coal exploration and development areas are at Cebu, Surigao del Sur and Zamboanga del Norte.

Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras earlier said they would want to pursue more coal projects to help address the country’s baseload or 24-hour power requirement.

In 2009, the DOE awarded more than 10 coal contracts with total investments of around P580 million.

Last June the DOE launched PECR 4, which is estimated to generate investments of $7.5 billion from the 15 areas offered for oil and gas exploration.

The government is expecting to award contracts for PECR 4 by the middle of 2012.

In 2003, the DOE launched PECR-1 wherein exploration blocks near oil producing areas in Northwest Palawan and in vast frontier basins in Southwest and East Palawan, Sulu Sea and Reed Bank were offered to investors.

Continuing the gains of PECR-1, in August 2005, the DOE conducted PECR 2005 wherein it offered investors opportunities for exploration and development not only of petroleum resources but also exploration and development of coal and geothermal resources.

Since 2005, the DOE has engaged in public contracting rounds in an aim to make the bidding of energy contracts more transparent.

When the PECR was introduced, no more service contracts were awarded without passing through this process.

So far, 13 petroleum service contracts, 19 coal operating contracts and a handful of geothermal exploration development and exploration contracts worth well over P1 billion in investments were awarded under the PECR.