New oil player to put up 8 new retail stations

New player Eastern Petroleum Corp. (EPC) will put up at least eight retail stations in Mindanao beginning end-March 2002, company chairman Fernando Martinez said.

In an interview, Martinez said the expansion program is geared towards reaching out to more customers particularly in the Southern part of the country despite the peace and order problem in the area.

"We are positive that the situation there will improve in time. We are committed to bringing services in the area this year," Martinez said, noting that most of their retail operations right now are concentrated in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

He said they are now setting their sights on Davao, General Santos City and Cotabato as possible locations of their new retail stations. Martinez said the construction of the service stations will be done in phases.

Martinez said they will allot P40 million to P60 million for this particular expansion project. This year, the company has set aside some P100 million for its capital expenditures program.

Bulk of the capex budget, he said, will finance the construction of an additional 30 service stations in Metro Manila and adjacent provinces.

According to the EPC official, they will be sourcing the products to be supplied in these new stations from a storage facility located in Gen. Santos City.

He noted that the said facility, which has a storage capacity of 5.1 million liters of fuel, being leased by EPC from the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

"We’ve started improving the storage facility that we are renting from Napocor. The moment that we are done with the procedure, we can immediately begin our operations. The facility is big enough to supply the diesel requirements of our target areas," he said.

Aside from the Mindanao areas, most of the other service stations that are scheduled to be put up this year would be located in the areas near the metropolis such as Sta. Rosa, Laguna. Other retail stations would be situated in Marikina and Pasig.

EPC currently operates 30 service stations in Luzon. By the end of 2003, the company expects to increase it to 100.

"We will be expanding aggressively in the next two years. In 2001, we only built 15 stations. We will double that in 2002," he said.

He said the expansion program would enable the company to almost double its revenues to P700 million by the end of the year from 2001’s P450 million.

And with the new venture in Mindanao, Martinez said EPC expects its revenues to further climb up to P1 billion in the next two years.

"We originally programmed to reach the P1-billion mark last year. But we have to adjust our targets due to some incidents that happened and pushed is to delay our expansion projects," he added.