SK Liguasan seeks foreign partners to drill Liguasan Marsh

MINDANAO-BASED SK Liguasan Oil and Gas Corp. is looking at foreign joint venture partners to develop the Liguasan Marsh in Cotababo Basin, an energy official said.

“At the moment, they are open for foreign farming-in investors,” Energy Undersecretary Donato Marcos said in a recent Senate hearing.

SKLOGC, 100-percent Filipino-owned company, owns Petroleum Service Contract No. 77 covering the development of the onshore Cotabato Basin, including the Liguasan Marsh.

The service contract covers a 72,000-hectare petroleum-prospective area in the onshore Cotabato Basin—a 1.2-million hectare region in Central Mindanao covering the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, North and South Cotabato, including Liguasan Marsh.

Marcos said oil and gas companies have 10 years under Presidential Decree 87 to develop the service contract area.

He said if the contract holder could find enough reserves for commercial development within the first seven years, they could apply with the DOE to move to the production and recovery stage.

“Once they drill, they can determine the magnitude or volume of reserves,” he said.

SKLOGC was the challenger for nominated Area 9 of the Philippine Conventional Energy Contracting Program, a transparent petroleum service contract awarding mechanism that allows the government to develop and utilize indigenous petroleum resources through qualified local and international exploration companies.

SKLOGC passed the completeness check under the evaluation criteria in the PCECP guidelines, but the original nominating party, Banaba Oil and Gas Energy Corp., was not able to comply with the requirements.

SKLOGC identified 22 sites in the Maguindanao-Liguasan area with potential for oil and gas deposits.

The DOE said in a letter to SKLOGC in February that the Office of the President granted it the authority to proceed with the awarding of the contract for nominated area 9, “provided that SKLOGC shall submit an undertaking stating, among others, that it shall abide by the final decision of the Supreme Court relative to tax assumption provisions of other existing PSCs.”