PTT plans to invest Bt57.59 billion in 2007, Bt53.58 billion in 2008, Bt50.76 billion in 2009, Bt34.17 billion in 2010 and Bt13.05 billion in 2011.

The board also gave the green light for the company to raise Bt50 billion to finance the five-year investment plan, the company said in a filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

Among major investment projects are PTT's third natural-gas pipeline from the Eastern Seaboard province of Rayong to two gas fields, a gas separation plant and an ethane plant. The remaining investment will go to the oil and petrochemical businesses.

In addition, the company has expanded its retail network in the Philippines via PTT Philippines Corp to capture bullish prospects of the country's oil industry. The company has been renamed from Subic Bay Distribution Inc.

In the middle of this year, PTT has committed to as much as four billion pesos (Bt2.8 billion) worth of investment in the Philippines in the near term. The company will be tasked to source products from Thailand, Singapore , Korea and Japan. It will also sell products to companies located in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, Clark Special Economic Zone and other economic zones in the country.

PTTPC president and CEO Siripong Phoungpaka said the company had yet to identify an area in Metro Manila as the location for the lubricant plant. He said they would spend about one billion pesos for this project. He said they were also planning to put up a liquefied-petroleum-gas plant with a capacity of between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes.

The LPG storage plant is targeted to start commercial operation in 2008 or 2009 in time for the start of PTT's LPG production in Thailand.

Siripong said PTTPC expected the construction of a five-million-litre depot in Cebu to be completed by October and start commercial operations by November. This oil terminal will allow PTT to cater to the petroleum market in the region.

He added that part of the five-year plan was the possibility of putting up an ethanol plant as part of the company's contribution to the promotion of the use of alternative fuels in the transport sector.

Siripong said of the five-billion-peso budget for the five-year period that they would start spending about 500 million pesos this year. A portion of this budget will go on the construction of an additional 50 retail gas stations all over the country in the next two years. PTTPC has 16 gas refilling stations. In the next five to 10 years it expects to put up 100 to 200 stations nationwide.

PTTPC's storage facilities are located in Subic Bay and Clark Field with a combined capacity of three million barrels.

Siripong said the expansion programme in the Philippines was part of the overall strategy of the PTT Group to go global.