Galoc consortium halts Palawan drilling

MANILA, Philippines - Galoc Production Co. (GPC) has temporarily stopped drilling activities at the Galoc oil field in Palawan.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, GPC consortium member Philodrill Corp. said production was shut down on Nov. 23 in preparation for the floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel Rubicon Intrepid sail-away to Singapore.

Rubicon is expected to depart this weekend for a planned three-month turret installation work program at the Keppel shipyard.

Philodrill said the last production of oil from the field is expected to be taken out this week.

“Cargo onboard was scheduled to be lifted on Nov. 25 which was the last offtake for the year,” it said.

The company said they will resume operations on the field early next year.

 “While the FPSO vessel is out of field, the seabed anchoring and riser modification will be undertaken in preparation for the reconnection of the FPSO on return to the field in late first quarter of 2012,” it said.

Production in the Galoc field, it said, would re-commence shortly after the FPSO reconnection.

GPC which holds 58.29 percent of Service Contract 14C, is jointly-owned by the Vitol Group and Otto Energy Ltd..

Other stakeholders in SC 14C are Oriental Petroleum & Minerals Corp. and Linapacan Oil Gas & Power Corp. with 7.57 percent; Philodrill Corp. with 7.03 percent; Forum Energy Corp. with 2.27 percent; Alcorn Gold, 1.53 percent and PetroEnergy, 1.03 percent.

In 2010, GPC advised that the 2010 production target of 2.24 million barrels has already been exceeded with approximately 2.4 million barrels produced.

The Galoc oil field has produced over 5.8 million barrels of oil to date. The field continues to produce oil at an average rate of about 8,000 barrels of oil per day for the past three months.

The government earned P490 million as of June this year from its share in the Galoc oil field, which started production in October 2008.

The Galoc oil field is estimated to contain 10 million barrels of oil and the Galoc consortium is planning to drill for two additional wells to increase production reserves by five million barrels.