Petronas expresses interest in Philippine natural gas prospect: official

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State-run oil firm Petronas has expressed interest in an offshore natural gas exploration project off Mindoro island in the Philippines, a Filipino energy official said today.

Thelmo Cunanan, president of the Philippine National Oil Co (PNOC), said Petronas has sent a technical team to evaluate data already gathered on the potential field off Mindoro south of Manila.

"This is one of our best prospects for gas," Cunanan told reporters on the sidelines of the OSEA oil and gas conference in Singapore.

He said the prospect is near the route of an undersea pipeline that lands natural gas from the Camago-Malampaya fields in the southwestern Philippines to the province of Batangas just across Mindoro island.

"Because this is very near the subsea pipeline coming from Malampaya to Batangas, we can just negotiate and make arrangements for tapping into the pipeline," he said.

"We are now in search for other investors. As a matter of fact, among them, Petronas has sent their technical team ot the Philippines to work with our people to review the data," he added.

State-run PNOC is interested to take a 34-percent equity in any joint venture for the Mindoro prospect, Cunanan said. AFP



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