Massive oil and gas exploration projects under President Benigno Aquino III’s public-private partnership (PPP) program are a “wholesale recipe for destruction" of Philippine biodiversity, a militant fisherfolk alliance warned on Thursday.
Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) vice-chair Salvador France raised the alarm over the 15 oil and gas exploration projects the Aquino administration is offering to American and European investors.
“Environmental catastrophe is written all over these oil and gas hunt projects of the Aquino administration and the destruction and imminent death of the country’s biodiversity will be the outright result of these foreign funded oil and gas experiments," France said.
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras had said that his department will kick off a US and European tour in July or August to convince foreign corporations to finance oil and gas exploration projects in the Philippines under the PPP arrangement.
But Pamalakaya called on the Senate and the House of Representatives to look into the many repercussions of auctioning off the country’s marine resources and territorial waters to foreign investors for oil and gas explorations, adding that these constitute “gross violations of the country’s national sovereignty and patrimony."
“We all know where we are coming from. President Aquino and his Energy secretary should know the devastating experience we had in 2005, when former-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo allowed a Japanese oil exploration firm to drill [off] the waters of Tanon Strait, a protected seascape separating the island provinces of Cebu and Negros for oil and gas," Pamalakaya said.
The group said that the Tanon Straits exploration had yielded no oil and gas, and worse, it destroyed the rich marine environment and reduced fish catch of small fishermen in the area from an average of 15 kg to just 1-3 kg per fishing trip.
The group added that several incidents of fish kills were also recorded in the exploration site and a number of fisherfolk and residents near the exploration site suffered different types of skin diseases.
Among the hundreds of thousands of hectares the Department of Energy would offer to new investors are ocean waters off the shores of Cagayan province, the Mindoro-Cuyo basin in northwest Palawan, five projects in eastern Palawan, offshore Cotabato, and the Sulu Sea. — MRT/VS
