Between Carcar city and Aloguinsan Oil exploration in south to start

CEBU, Philippines - The Australia-based oil and gas company, Gas2Grid (G2G) Ltd., is set to start its drilling operation within in this month at the covered area of 75,000 hectares between Aloguinsan and Carcar City in southern Cebu.

Energy Undersecretary Jose Layug Jr. and G2G Ltd. Chairman David Munns led yesterday the blessing and public presentation of Oil Drilling Rig-2 assembled in its maintenance yard located in Panadtaran, San Fernando, Cebu.

Rig-2 will then be disassembled and moved to the Jacob-1 location in Carcar City side to commence the drilling operations by the end of the second week of this month.

The company owned Rig-2 is a Gardner Denver 500, 800 horsepower (HP) machine with capacity to drill down to 2,750 meters with 114-millimeter drill pipe or 3,660 meters with 89-mm drill pipe.

Rig-1 which is a Brewster N2 workover rig is currently on the Malolos-1 location in Aloguinsan side undergoing an upgrade before conducting the workover and testing program.

The company employs around 30 local rig crew to assist Filipino and foreign drilling engineers who have experience in Libya.

The Department of Energy awarded Service Contract No. 44 on January 28, 2004 to G2G Ltd.

It has completed various exploration activities, including seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation that led to the identification and maturation of drillable prospects.

The three wells that will test these drilling prospects are Jacob-1, Gumamela-1 in Carcar City and Ilang-1 in Aloguinsan to depths of 1,000 to 1,300 meters.

The company said the three prospects vary in size and hold resource potential of millions of barrels.

The Jacob-1 site is said to have a potential of 4 million to 50 million barrels recoverable oil.

“We are hoping that with this 50 million (entire resource potential) we can meet some of the demand on the daily basis,” Layug said.

Layug said that daily oil consumption in the country is 300,000 barrels per day with only 6,000 barrels of oils produced daily and the rest are imported.

Layug congratulated G2G for having the first well to be drilled this year using the skills of the Filipinos.

More contracts for oil and gas exploration to be signed this year, said Layug.

He emphasized that the government has not spent any amount for this exploration and the investors themselves gambled their millions of dollars not knowing for sure whether they can get oil and gas.

Munns expressed confidence that they will yield positive results after various exploration activities were completed.

Once successful, the government will get 60 percent while 40 percent of the total revenues will go to the company.   Aloguinsan Mayor Augustus Caesar Moreno said that a lot of attempts to drill in their place since 1960s have failed.

“Maybe this is the time Aloguinsan will be fortunate,” Moreno said.   Since the exploration has started, Moreno said that it already has created economic activities among the locals in the area.

G2G Ltd is engaged in the activity of exploration of oil and gas in the Philippines. The company focuses its operations in oil and gas discovery in Cebu. —JPM (FREEMAN)