Humongous Gas Find? Just a lot of gas!

While browsing the ‘Net for my lost blogposts, I found this one:

Dated June 6, 2006, it says:

Being a petroleum engineer, friends and relatives time and again ask me about oil and gas reserves in the Philippines. Last week, I had been asked again. Below are copies of an article and a letter to the Editor about the oil and gas scenario in the Philippines. In both instances, I tried to tell people that we do not have giant gas fields and that our Energy department and PNOC officials are simply iincompetent.

But then, in a society that rewards incompetents, what can one expect?

(IMAGES of newspaper pages)

We will never find substantial oil & gas reserves unless we will have a government (bureaucracy) run by COMPETENT people.

In a parliamentary form of government, everything will depend on the bureacracy. A bureaucracy run by incompetents and mediocres would be catastrophic in a parliamentary form of government. For those who are in favor of Cha-Cha (Charter Change), think again.

Run by Lawyers

Just think, how could the Dept. of Energy or National Power Corporation know what they are doing when they are run by lawyers and not by people with Energy-related academic and professional background?

Read my post Knowledge Society – Philippine Energy sector (redirecdted)

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July 3, 2018

INCOMPETENCE IN ENERGY AFFAIRS

Well, the government never stops lying to the public about our energy situation. I know because I worked at the Dept. of Energy and Philippine National Oil Company, and I saw the sheer incompetence of the people there.  When I saw DOE’s first Philippine Energy Plan (PEP) which was submitted to Congress, I was shocked. The figures came from the air. I immediately wrote a Memorandum Report to the Dept. Secretary, detailing the inaccuracies of the PEP and urged him to do a much better PEP than the one done by the previous Secretary.

Last May 22, the government announced the ff.:

“The discovery of this oil field by DOE and China International Mining Petroleum Company Limited (CIMP C. Ltd.) is a major breakthrough in the Philippine oil and gas industry. The supply of petroleum and natural gas from the Alegria Oil Field is expected to last until 2037, producing 360 barrels of oil per day. Ang oil field na ito ay magbibigay daan sa masmadaming trabaho at ang pagpapalago sa ekonomiya ng munisipalidad. “

I wrote a comment on FB that goes:

360 bbls a day? ONLY??! KALOKOHAN ‘YAN! (That’s crazy!)
We have been producing 20,000 to 30,000 bbls a day for decades!!!
Our petroleum products demand (this is after Refining crude oil) is around 455 Thousand Bbls Per Calendar Day!!!

Gas reserves is 9.6 billion cubic feet or 277.5 Million cubic meters. ONLY?! KALOKOHAN ‘YAN!

The country’s gas production for 2016 alone was 3.98 billion cubic METERS — way much more than the proven gas reserves of this new-found field!!! The country’s proved gas reserves is 98.54 billion cu METERS (1 January 2017 estimate)

Operating such wells might be even more expensive than revenue prospects.

THIS IS ANOTHER SCAM! PERHAPS THE MINUSCULE OIL & GAS FIELD IS JUST AN EXCUSE TO GET (265,000 HAS.) TWO HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE THOUSAND HECTARES OF LAND!!!

MAS MALAKI ANG PAKINABANG NG 265,000 HECTARES OF LAND KUMIN SA 360 BBLS OF CRUDE OIL PER DAY. Krudo ‘yan. Kelangan mo pa i-refine ‘yan para gamitin.Wala namang refinery ang gobyerno. Binenta na ang Petron. Para mabenta sa ibang bansa ang krudo, kelangan mo ipunin muna. Kelangan mo ng higanteng lalagyanan (reservoir)! (The 265,000 hectares of land has more value than 360 bbls of crude oil per day. That is crude oil. It needs to be refined before it can be used. The government does not have a refinery!. Petron has been sold! In order to sell the crude oil to another country, it needs to be stored. One would need huge reservoirs!) 😡

And for the nth time, a lot of hype appeared on mainstream and social media about the allegedly massive gas reservoir under the Liguasan Marsh. I had already debunked that hypothesis in 1999.

PLAYING THE STOCK MARKET

Since the 1980s, enterprising (or should I say, devious) businessmen play the stock market using “oil & gas” companies. The M.O. goes like this:

* Businessmen create an oil exploration company. They get a GSEC ( Geophysical Survey and Exploration Contract) from Dept. of Energy (DOE).
*They will claim to find oil/gas and upgrade the GSEC to a Service Contract (SC)
*They will register in the Stock Exchange
*They will issue an IPO (Initial Public Offering)
*They will begin drilling and will make predictions of huge discovery.
*They will create great media hype, with the DOE wittingly or unwittingly giving approval to all the business company’s pronouncements.
*This will create such enthusiasm among market investors, who will buy the company stocks
*The stock market price of the company will rise rapidly because of the media hype.
*And when the price is high enough, the company will sell and short sell its stocks.
*The company then sells the company to a big firm that could use the soon-to-be-bankrupt company as a tax write-off.
*The company announces the coup de grace, i.e., that the oil/gas well is DRY or not commercially viable.

In 1997/1998, a company drilling for oil at the Manila Bay was making waves. It was in the news every day, advising people how deep the drilling went and how much oil was detected and predicted. It was the usual scam, with the DOE giving the stamp of approval.

One day, there was an event at DOE/PNOC. I was seated next to the owner of the company drilling at Manila Bay. I think he was an American. I told him that when the final results of the drilling would be announced, the losing shareholders would skin him alive. He laughed and said it would not be his problem. He had already sold the company to a rich Chinese-Filipino businessman!

Below is a copy of my very first Letter to the Editor re: Oil and Gas. I was one of the stock holders who lost money on this kind of scheme. At that time, I thought the government agency, Bureau of Energy, knew what they were doing. In fact, they were the one releasing news about the progress of the drilling. I didn’t know that because of their ignorance, the businessmen were just using them.

Last month, there’s a lot buzz about a gigantic gas discovery in the Liguasan Marsh. It was supposed to contain trillions and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. This is actually old news. During the time of President Estrada, he announced that the Liguasan Marsh natural gas discovery would be able to power the WHOLE Mindanao. I debunked this. Perhaps it could power a WHOLE barangay, but certainly not the whole of Mindanao.

In the report below, the reporter wrote that the earlier reports only said that it could power “all the rural barangays” of Mindanao. Not true. Estrada boasted that the new gas find could power the whole Mindanao!

The one below also talks about the Liguasan Marsh gas as well as the Fuga Island gas.

Unfortunately for the Philippines, most of the talk about huge gas reserves is well, just a lot of gas!

Below is about the debate on “Oil Exchange”.