Nido Petroleum, DOE encouraged by 2 oil discoveries in Northwest Palawan

The Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed yesterday two new oil discoveries of Australia-based Nido Petroleum Ltd. in the Northwest Palawan.

Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes said the drilling of the Yakal-1 and Tindalo-1 wells in Nido Petroleum’s Service Contract “resulted in an encouraging oil discovery.”

“The first well in the program, Yakal-1, resulted in an encouraging oil discovery in the Nido Formation and was immediately followed by a second discovery at Tindalo-1 resulting in over 200 meters of combined oil column intersected between the two wells,” Reyes said.

Reyes noted that these will be additional discoveries in the offshore Northwest Palawan basin, where the first oil discovery in the Philippines over the last 14 years was recently made.

According to Reyes, the two well-drilling program commenced last month and was initiated to test the oil potential of the so-called Nido Formation Reef in the area. 

The two wells are being operated by Nido Petroleum along with another Australian firm Kairiki Energy Ltd. (whose local subsidiary is known as Yilgarn Petroleum Philippines) as a joint venture partner.

Reyes said, he is “very pleased and excited to see Nido’s drilling activity in SC 54 and hear about the success of the Yakal-1 and now the Tindalo-1 well.” 

He noted that the latest discovery in Tindalo-1, the second one for SC 54 in two months, highlights the attractiveness of the basin and the need for activity to continue in the country.

Reyes added that “efforts to extract the reserve should indeed be done and the DOE will continue to encourage more companies to invest in the sector.”

He noted that discoveries and opportunities like these could enhance the country’s energy security. 

“We have reached a milestone of 57.2-percent energy independence. But, oil still accounts for 31.8 percent of the country’s energy mix in 2007,” he said. 

Nido Petroleum chief executive officer Jocot de Dios has assured that “based on excellent results in both wells and their close proximity of 5.5 km from each other, we will be able to assess the commercial potential of the drilling program over the next few months with all of the substantive data we have already acquired.”

“For the future we have delineated additional Nido Formation targets located in close proximity to both Tindalo-1 and Yakal-1 which could be explored with future drilling programs,” De Dios said.

De Dios also stressed that Nido Petroleum will optimize its shallow water strategy drilling program to exploit the full potential of the area. 

He added Nido Petroleum will also continue to further its extensive deeper water exploration portfolio with the company’s recent extensive 2D and 3D seismic campaigns in order to deliver a sustainable forward drilling program, in not only SC 54, but also its deeper water blocks SC 58 and SC 63 also located in the Palawan basin.

Combined oil reserve in the two wells is estimated at around 18 million barrels.

The two wells are five kilometers away and on-trend from currently producing oilfields of Nido A and Nido B.

At present, Nido Petroleum together with other Filipino oil companies as a consortium operates the Nido and Matinloc fields, offshore oilfields located at Northwest Palawan that pumps out about 5,000 barrels of oil per day.