PILIPINAS SHELL Petroleum Corp. may source part of its requirements from the Alegria oil field in Southern Cebu.
“We are always evaluating whatever maybe feasible. We still don’t know if it’s compatible to our refinery and is the pricing sufficient for us to make margins. But we are open-minded. We are still waiting for the results of the sample sent to Hong Kong,” Shell President Cesar Romero said.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has declared the Alegria oil field, operated by China International Mining Petroleum Co. Ltd. (CIMP), to have commercial quantities of natural gas and oil resources.
CIMP Co. holds Petroleum Service Contract 49, which covers the Alegria oil field.
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi said the oil field has the potential to power up a 60-megawatt gas plant.
The DOE and CIMP earlier discovered an estimated 27.93 million barrels of oil with a possible production recovery of 3.35 MMBO, or a conservative estimate of 12 percent of total oil in place/reserves.
For natural gas, about 9.42 billion cubic feet of reserves were found, with the recoverable resource estimated at 6.6 bcf or about 70 percent of total natural gas in place/reserves.
Based on the development plan crafted after the initial testing, the natural gas and oil production of the field may last until 2037.
“We are actually interested on that provided that it is economically feasible in terms of compatibility. The type of crude that we process must be matched with the demand profile and capability of the refinery,” Romero said.
In 2016 the DOE and CIMP jointly established the oil field that contained commercial quantities of natural gas upon its discovery of oil accumulation in the adjacent hydrocarbon traps within the Alegria underground area.