Abraham is expected to arrive in the Philippines in December and Perez is hoping that the Secretary will be coming with representatives from five US oil and gas exploration firms that had earlier expressed their interest in doing joint-venture projects in the Philippines. These companies are, Hunt Oil, Amareda, Hess, Marathon Oil and Unocal.

Perez, who one of the few Cabinet officials allowed to sit in during the bilateral talks, had the opportunity to update the US President on a recent investment promotion. "I updated [Bush] about our investment promotion on the Philippine Contracting Round, which we had last August when we were offering 46 blocks in the South China Sea and Sulu Sea offshore oil and gas exploration," said Perez who hopes the bidding for the blocks will be finally be announced in March 2004.

The Energy secretary also briefed President Bush on surveys done recently that show the archipelago could be sitting on as much as "eight billion barrels of potential oil and natural gas reserves primarily on the offshore areas, including those in the existing Malampaya natural gas reserves in Palawan." He also explained how the Philippines were lessening its dependence on Middle East crude oil imports by going Russian.