Firm gains rights to Sulu project

Mitra Energy Philippines Ltd., the local unit of Malaysia-based Mitra Energy Ltd., has gained full ownership of the Service Contract (SC) 56 license, allowing it to pursue the Sulu Sea exploration project.

In a statement posted on its website, Mitra Energy said it had “increased to 100 percent its equity in SC 56, Sandakan Basin, offshore Philippines, effective October 31, 2011.”

This means that Mitra Energy has already acquired the interests of its partners in the SC 56 consortium, namely ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Philippines BV, which previously held a 50-percent stake and was the operator of the service contract, and BHP Billiton Petroleum Pty Ltd., which had a 25-percent interest.

“Mitra believes that SC 56 presents an exciting opportunity to commercialize significant hydrocarbon resource volumes and support the future energy requirements of the Philippines,” Mitra Energy said.

Only two weeks ago, ExxonMobil Exploration, the local arm of US oil giant ExxonMobil Corp., announced that it would withdraw from the Sulu Sea exploration project and resign as operator of SC 56, following its discovery that gas from the wells it had drilled in the contract area were of “noncommercial quantities.”

“While it encountered gas in three of the four wells drilled, noncommercial quantities of gas were found,” ExxonMobil earlier said. The company spent at least $400 million in the past two years to drill the exploration wells in the Sandakan Basin.

But according to Mitra Energy, two significant gas discoveries have been found in drilling the Dabakan-1 and Palandag-1A wells, and a further minor discovery at Babendil-1.

In a separate interview with reporters, Energy Undersecretary Jose M. Layug Jr. said that Mitra Energy is free to look for other partners to join them in pursuing the Sulu Sea gas project.

Mitra Energy has a lot of leeway in terms of the period remaining for exploration and other activities it may deem as necessary since ExxonMobil had already fast-tracked the completion of the consortium’s four-well commitment in only two years, out of the seven-year exploration timeframe given to developers, Layug said.

Meanwhile, the Energy official revealed that ExxonMobil remained interested in scouting for other oil and gas exploration opportunities, noting that the Philippines has always been “an area of interest for them.”

But the US firm may no longer have enough time to prepare for and participate in the ongoing bidding round—the Philippine Energy Contracting Round 4 for petroleum—which commenced in June this year.