Palawan: Oil search may yield up to 450 Million Barrels

A new seismic study of the Australian owned firms lease of Nido Petroleum off the coast of Palawan Province indicates the area may have yield of up to 450 Million barrels of Oil available for the Nido service contract area 54.

PERTH, Australia, May 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Nido Petroleum is pleased to
announce further updates on the exploration programme of Service Contract
54 (SC 54).
    SC 54 is being evaluated by Nido and Joint Venture partner, Yilgarn
Petroleum Philippines PTY Ltd (Yilgarn) with the focus being placed on two
areas within the permit.
    The first area consists of the technically robust Coron North prospect,
which shows potential for up to 450 million barrels of oil. The recent 3D
seismic interpretation has confirmed Coron North as a strong drilling
opportunity.
    Further technical and commercial analysis will need to be completed
before Coron North is mature for drilling; however Nido and Yilgarn are
very excited by the potential size of the structure.
    Nido's Head of Exploration, Mr. Jon Pattillo says, "Nido is pleased
that the 3D seismic is starting to deliver tangible exploration results, in
particular the Coron North prospect which is developing into an attractive
drilling opportunity."
    Also included in this first focus area is the Princesa lead; the 3D
seismic data has confirmed the presence of the Pagasa turbidite play,
including the large Princesa lead, in the western part of SC 54.
    Nido is confident it will have a positive update on the Princesa lead
once the additional 180km2 3D seismic programme is completed in the third
quarter of 2007.
    In addition the high quality 3D seismic has also uncovered a number of
new leads similar to the Coron North project and Princesa lead. This
provides even greater upside potential within SC 54.
    The second focus area is in the shallow waters of the eastern part of
SC 54. Nido is especially interested in finding new opportunities here
which can quickly be brought onto production to generate early cash flow.
    Initial interpretation of this portion of the permit has identified 24
pinnacle reef structures in less than 120 meters of water. The reef trend
is of particular importance because of its similarity to the producing Nido
oil fields.
    These pinnacle reef structures are possible candidates for rapid
exploitation given the lower drilling and development costs afforded by
shallow waters. Detailed technical and engineering work will be conducted
over the next few months to determine the commerciality of these features.
    Nido's Managing Director, Mr. David Whitby says the results validate
Nido's long-held belief in the prospectivity of the Palawan Basin as a
whole.
    "The opportunities currently being evaluated in SC 54 provide Nido with
a significant prospect and lead portfolio from which to select a number of
high quality candidates for drilling in the next sub-phase of the Service
Contract."

This is good news as on top of this there are already productive fields of natural gas and Oil in the area. Over the last few decades the palawan Oil fields often have not been much more than a trickle onto the world market.

It’s Gas Field however is another story – shame though that island province does not have its own pipeline that might lower costs for electricity in the area. Most if not all of the Gas fields wealth is going to be used to support electrical requirements of metro Manila – using a 2 billion dollar pipeline network that is almost at its completion.

A spur line should have been lobbied for to get more of the Natural Gas onto the mainland of Palawan – but – the powers that be only seem to interested in Metro Manila and the surrodning areas rather than allowing another xone to develop and compete and decongest the already over populated capitol. a shame really considering – chaep power could really be a boon to the ‘Last Frontier of the Philippines”.