Glencore's Philippine copper unit plans $600 Million USD expansion

Commodities trader Glencore International is close to concluding technical and financial studies for its $600-million plan to double capacity at the Philippines' only copper smelter and refinery, a top official of the smelter said on Thursday.

 

Work on enlarging operations at the refinery in the central Philippine province of Leyte could start as soon as next May, once the plan has been approved and finalised by the end of this year or early in 2013, Angel Veloso Jr., chairman of the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp (PASAR), told Reuters.

 

"In June, we announced investment of up to about $600 million," Veloso told Reuters. "The expansion plan is to increase capacity to a maximum of 1.2 million tonnes of copper concentrate."

 

The plant now processes 720,000 tonnes of copper concentrates annually and refines 215,000 tonnes of cathodes.

 

Technical studies should be completed by October and financial studies by December, Veloso said, adding that the project would take two to three years to complete.

 

Regarding the investment plan, Trade Undersecretary Cristino Panlilio said: "They are committed to that."

 

PASAR, which is 78-percent owned by Glencore, the world's largest diversified commodities trader, also wants to build a 200-MW coal-fired power plant to lower its energy cost, and may sell extra power to users at an industrial estate it plans to build near its refinery, Panlilio added.

 

"They have already informed us of their intention to file for (tax) incentives for the project," he said.

 

PASAR resumed operations at the refinery last month after it was shut in January by a fire.

 

The company, which has been producing copper cathodes for export since 1976, was acquired from the Philippine government by Glencore in 1999.

 

PASAR buys and refines copper concentrates from mines in Australia, Canada, Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and South America.

 

PASAR is one of only a handful of companies involved in downstream metals processing in the Southeast Asian country.

 

Philippine President Benigno Aquino wants the mining industry to shift to more value-added output by setting up processing plants and moving away from direct shipments of ores, so as to help the country raise more revenue from its largely untapped mineral resources, estimated to be worth $850 billion.

 

Reuters 

Continue reading

UK –Philippines will start Natural Gas Exploration in Mindoro

 

A consortium of five foreign firms will start drilling natural gas in the southern part of Mindoro Island in the second quarter of next year, the Department of Energy said.

 

Huge oil and gas seeps were indicated on Mindoro Island adjacent to the Palawan Basin, which hosts all the producing oil and gas wells in the Philippines.

 

Drilling is scheduled at Roxas, Mansalay, and Bulalacao, in Oriental Mindoro, and Magsaysay, San Jose, and Sablayan, in Occidental Mindoro.

 

"Operations will begin shortly," according to the United Kingdom-based Pitkin Petroleum (Philippines) Plc, main operator of Service Contract 53, which was approved by the DoE on July 8, 2005 in favor of a consortium of Pitkin, Resource Management Association (Hongkong) Ltd., The Philodrill Corp., Anglo-Philippine Holdings Corp., and Basic Energy Corp.

 

DoE Undersecretary Jose Layug was please over the prospects in Mindoro.

 

"The service contract area coverage is 724,000 hectares," he said. "The exploration period covers  seven years (started in 2005) with different sub-phases."

 

Pitkin Petroleum said "numerous onshore oil and gas seeps plus two gas discoveries are located in the contract area and more than 15 prospective structures with individual areas of closure of between seven and 65 square kilometers have been identified from previous work."

 

The firm has a participating interest of 70 percent in the block, with the remaining 30 percent held by the Philodrill Corp. Basic Consolidated Inc. and Anglo-Philippine Holdings Corp.

 

Oriental Mindoro Congressman Rodolfo Valencia welcomed the move "considering the fact that it will bring economic boom to our province."

 

He said the National Grid and Transmission Corporation has approved the Batangas-Mindoro Submarine Interconnection Project worth P11 billion.

 

The underwater link aims to convey surplus electric power from Mindoro Grid to Luzon.

 

Layug said the agency is not only focusing its exploration works on the traditional energy sources, such as oil and gas, in Mindoro Island, but also on renewable sources of energy, such as geothermal, wind, and hydro power.

 

Last March, this year, President Benigno Aquino  III led the switch-on ceremony of the island's first hydro-power plant in Bgy. Linaw-Kawayan, in San Teodoro municipality.

 

Now operational, the mini-hydro, with a construction cost of P405 million borrowed from the Development Bank of the Philippines, is capable of producing 4.5 megawatts of electricity.

 

The groundbreaking and construction of the country's second wind power projects, the province's second renewable energy project, was undertaken last September 7.

 

Situated on a 1,296-hectare mountain village overlooking  the scenic beach resorts of the Verde Island Passage, the three-48-mw wind farm costs PhP6-billion.

 

The construction of the first phase, capable of generating 16 megawatts of electricity and costing P2 billion, will last in two years in 2014.

 

The first operating wind farm facility is in Bangui, Ilocos Norte, with 20 units of wind mills capable of generating 33 megawatts of electricity. Each unit stands 70-meter high, and blade diameter of 41 meters each.

 

The Bangui wind farm was originally designed to only produce clean electricity without emitting carbon, people call them as "giant electric fans" that have become a major tourist destination in Northern Luzon.

 

The Puerto Galera wind project is a component of the Power Development Program of Oriental Mindoro supported by the Provincial Development Council (PDC).

 

Manila Standard Today

Continue reading