Drivers filled up their vehicles at Caltex station in Phnom Penh's Chhbar Ampov district last year. Hean Rangsey
The government has welcomed Chevron (Cambodia) Ltd’s plan to nearly triple its network of Caltex petrol stations in the Kingdom to 100, according to a senior official at the Ministry of Mines and Energy on February 28.
Cheap Sour, director-general of the ministry’s General Department of Petroleum, told The Post that Chevron Cambodia CEO Pongtorn Tangmanuswong revealed the expansion plans at a meeting with minister Suy Sem on February 23 without providing an exact timeframe.
“In actuality these are merely sketches, they don’t confirm whether the 100 stations would materialise by this year. The company now has just 35 stations.
“The government welcomes all of the company’s business expansions so long as the proposed locations have received the go-ahead from local authorities and the technical specifications of the stations are in accordance with our directives and procedures related to safety,” he said.
Sour noted that he had yet to receive formal applications for the proposed petrol stations.
“The company has to apply for the added stations individually and we need to keep tabs on safety at the prospective locations.
“The petrol station business is different from others and requires us to visit and evaluate safety plans and locations in a practical way.”
Chevron Cambodia was incorporated in 1995 as Caltex Cambodia, according to its parent company, the New York-listed Chevron Corp. In 2008, the wholly-owned retail and marketing subsidiary was renamed, while it continued to do business under the Caltex brand.
On the New York Stock Exchange, Chevron’s (CVX) share price fell $2.35 or 2.30 per cent to close at $100.00 on February 26 for a market capitalisation of $192.638 billion, with 14.454 million shares traded.
Chevron Cambodia’s expansion plans come as Singapore-based oil and gas exploration company KrisEnergy Ltd on December 28 extracted the first drop of crude oil from Cambodian waters.
The highly-anticipated milestone extraction from the offshore Cambodia Block A concession in the Khmer Basin’s Apsara oilfield made the Kingdom the eighth oil producer in the 10-member ASEAN, with only Singapore and land-locked Laos not producing crude.
And Prime Minister Hun Sen recently said the PV Drilling III jack-up rig began drilling the second well of the five-well “Mini Phase 1A” mini platform on January 30.
“I would like to assure our compatriots that our first oilfield has been in operation for 33 days, producing 1,236 barrels a day. In 33 days, 40,788 barrels,” he said then. “We will continue to pump oil in 2021.”
If international oil prices remain at around $55 per barrel, the Kingdom could net about $30 million per annum from the commodity, he added. The estimates show that the Block A could be able to pump out between 7,000 and 7,500 barrels a day.
Sour has confirmed that KrisEnergy is drilling the remaining four wells of the mini platform to accompany A-01D, the source of the Kingdom’s first drop of oil extracted. These wells have been named A-02D through A-05D.
