I’ve got good news for Divergent Poles who got concerned about the promise of Malampaya in this post yesterday. It’s not the natural gas in Malampaya that has gone “bellly-up” as he puts it, it’s the test wells where they were extracting black oil (crude). Here is one news story about the issue. Here’s an interesting one from 2002 about the oil field.
The gas is is flowing in abundance I believe.
2 Comments
Hi there Nick, thanks for providing clarification regarding my concern.
Then my question is, if the natural gas is indeed flowing and abundant, how come power prices are still very expensive in the Philippines.
I know the PPA contracts that Ramos propagated during his term have pegged energy prices at a high rate despite its abundance.
Hey I am glad you started this blog, we need more of these in the bloggosphere!
Hey, I will link you to my blog!
Thanks, Mell. I’d like to see more bloggers talking about energy too so I can point to them and create some discussion.
Yours is the 64 thousand dollar question. No simple answers. It’s not only a Philippine problem – similar things are happening in California, for example.
I’m moving toward the opinion, however, that not a single peso should be invested on energy in the Philippines that doesn’t actually “lower” the price.
Not provide a promise of lower costs in the future at the expense of higher short-term costs or provide some general theoretical basis for lower costs, but actually lowers it today. Not enough focus on that.
I think I’ll try to test that theory as we go along in the new year and see how it plays out.