November 11, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The government is on track to award the country’s first service contracts for native hydrogen exploration that are still subject to President Marcos’ approval, according to a Cabinet official.
At the sidelines of the 2024 Pilipinas Conference, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said the competitive bidding process for the hydrogen contracts covering predetermined areas (PDAs) in Central Luzon has been “proceeding.”
“The service contracts have to be submitted to the Office of the President for approval. So I don’t want to preempt the Office of the President from acting on it,” Lotilla said.
With power demand projected to grow by six percent annually in the short term, the Department of Energy (DOE) is seeing the potential of hydrogen as an energy source for the country.
During the 2024 Philippine bid round in August, the DOE received five applications for native hydrogen exploration: three for PDA-PH-1 and two for PDA-PH-2.
These applications have passed the completeness check and are qualified for further substantive evaluation.
Lotilla declined to provide further details about the bidding and only said that the interested parties “already had their deadlines.”
The comprehensive legal, technical and financial evaluation of all qualified applications is set to be completed by the end of the year, with the highest-ranking applicants to be endorsed to Marcos.
“So we will make the announcements when the President has approved the same,” the secretary said.
Earlier, Energy Undersecretary Alessandro Sales said that “well-known” international players in hydrogen exploration and production have shown interest in the bid round this year.
“This activity marks the beginning of a transformative journey that may span several years. If we do not embark on this activity now, it will never come to fruition,” Sales said.
This year’s bid round, the DOE said, saw the highest number of valid applications for PDAs compared to the Philippine Energy Contracting Round in 2015 and the Philippine Conventional Energy Contracting Program in 2018 to 2019.
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