Pacific Asia Energy Corporations CBM Contracts in China
The first Canadian publicly traded company awarded a Production Sharing Contract was Pacific Asia China Energy Inc. (PACE), which holds the PSC through its wholly owned subsidiary, Asia Canada Energy Corp. Pacific Asia China Energy, which trades on Toronto’s Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol of PCE, also holds a second PSC through another wholly owned subsidiary China Canada Energy Corporation. It was the former, which interested us, the company’s Guizhou Project in southern China.In talking with Dr. David Marchioni, one of Canada’s leading CBM geologists, he said of CUCBM, the Chinese government doesn’t want to hand out resources to people who don’t do anything with them. They want them developed. They want to have gas. They want to have energy Dr. Marchioni helped co-author an Assessment of Coalbed Methane Exploration Projects in Canada published by the Geological Survey of Canada. He is also president of Petro-Logic Services in Calgary, whose clients have included the Canadian divisions of Apache, BP, BHP, Burlington, Devon, El Paso Energy, and Phillips Petroleum, among others. He is also a director of Pacific Asia China Energy and is overseeing the company’s CBM exploration program in China.
But what is the strategy here? If Alberta is now turning the corner and putting itself on the map as a serious CBM contender, why would one of Canada’s top CBM geologists get excited and pursue a property in southern China. We got access to a huge resource for little money said Dr. Marchioni. Instead of paying hundreds of millions for a concession this size, we paid a small fraction of that. Comparably, the project at Guizhou would have cost up to $200 million to acquire in Alberta
China needs to attract foreign capital, and may be generous up front, but did PACE buy a pig in the poke? We questioned him about the potential size of the resource. Marchioni responded, the layman may think those are really big numbers, but you only have to look at the official reports. These are the numbers those guys think He was referring to the Sproule assessment of the resource, which offered a three-case scenario, starting at nearly 1 billion cubic feet and reaching the upper limit of more than 11 trillion cubic feet. Still, their assessment for a most likely scenario was a hefty 5.2 trillion cubic feet. Marchioni added, they were numbers we originally thought we had, and they’ve been confirmed
How big is big in this case? I think we could fully support some large plant of some sort Marchioni explained. This is more of a long-term thing where you would be looking at a major industrial development. You’d be looking to either have enough money yourself or you bring in partners to do things like liquefied natural gas or major gas-fired power station, liquefaction of coal.
Marchioni was quite excited about the CBM project in Guizhou, these are all big projects, but the resource is there to support such a project. Because the resource is so huge, you could support a project like that. There also are a lot of potential industrial users for gas in the region. China Daily reported South China, where the Guizhou province is located, is facing gas shortage problems because of the high-energy demands of Guangdong province.
And what does PACE bring to the Chinese? Hopefully, they’ll have an operating CBM project or two contributing clean burning fuel to their energy mix, which is really what they want, answered Marchioni. We also bring access to outside technology from places that are producing CBM.