By Myrna M. Velasco Service contract-holder China International Mining Petroleum Company Limited (CIMP Co. Ltd.) has committed to invest US$79 million (approximately P4.1 billion) for the commercial development of its Alegria oil field in Cebu basin, according to Energy Undersecretary Donato D. Marcos. That will be for the duration of the production agreement, or until 2037, that the service contractor had signed with the Department of Energy. The presence of commercial scale reserves at the field had been formally established December last year, but signing of the joint declaration was just sealed with the DOE last month. As already set out, the gas resources to be extracted from the field could fuel a prospective 60-megawatt power generation facility. The Alegria oil field is under Service Contract No. 49, in which exploration and drilling activities started way back in 2009. It was in 2016 when breakthrough was established at the block for potential gas discovery, with manifest accumulation of oil at adjacent hydrocarbon traps within the Alegria underground area. As previously indicated by the DOE, oil reserves extraction could reach as much as 27.93 million barrels; while gas yield may top 6.6 billion cubic feet, about 70-percent recovery out of the estimated reserves. So far, this is the first commercial-scale petroleum discovery concretized under the Duterte administration; and this has been raising hopes for more commercial finds of oil and gas in the country. The energy department in particular has started placing its bet on unsolicited tenders submission under its Philippine Conventional Energy Contracting Program; to be followed next by its offer of pre-determined service areas.