The Myth of Arroyo’s Power Crisis
Oil companies have been
overpricing the public in the past years, as they took advantage of
automatic price hikes allowed under a deregulated regime. In a review of
pump prices from 2000 to 2004, Ibon Philippines found that oil products
have been overpriced by a total of PhP3.68 per liter.
By Maria
Salamat
Bulatlat
The Arroyo government
is projecting a vigorous can-do attitude vis-à-vis what they call as
looming oil crisis in the
Philippines. Scaring the public
that it will be more severe than the 1974 and 1979 oil crisis, President
Macapagal-Arroyo is also using the oil issue to try to stabilize her
presidency and twit the ouster moves against her. She has been calling for
“unity” to face the said oil crisis; her press secretary has said it’s an
issue far more important than politics.
To address this
looming crisis, Malacañang (the presidential palace) unveiled a set of
measures last week designed to conserve energy, reduce its overall
consumption, and exploit alternative sources of fuel. Macapagal-Arroyo
called for a "change of lifestyle.” She appealed to businesses to reduce
oil and electricity consumption, modify work hours and implement measures
in their operations to "strengthen productivity while saving on energy."
She urged the granting of public transportation franchises to vehicles
using alternative, renewable and indigenous fuels.
|
Gasoline boy washes pump
Photo
by Ace Alegre |
Her cabinet also
lined up specific measures. The Department of Energy (DoE) is working for
the opening of the first compressed natural gas (CNG) mother-daughter
stations and its use by few buses utilizing CNG. These have been delayed
for months, but Energy Undersecretary Peter Abaya said it will start
operation by September this year. The DoE also plans to push for the
establishment of a CNG depot next year to ensure supply in Metro Manila.
In a conference on
oil prices, Abaya stressed the need for it as no one so far wants to
invest in a pipeline which will bring CNG from Batangas to Metro Manila.
The DoE is also
searching for foreign investors to fund projects in putting up power
plants that use indigenous energy sources like wind, sun, hydrothermal and
geothermal. They're also studying the possibilities of coal liquefaction.
And with the Supreme Court’s decision on allowing foreign equities in
mining, the energy department is also attracting mining corporations to
pursue oil drilling, exploration and extraction in the
Philippines’16
identified petroleum basins.
The Department of
Finance (DoF), meanwhile, has lined up several measures like removing the
excise tax on diesel, kerosene and bunker fuel, and slashing import
tariffs on petroleum products from 5 percent to 3 percent, except for LPG
on which no tariff is imposed. These would reduce the price of diesel by
as much as P1.63 per liter and the pump price by as much as P0.50 per
liter, according to Finance Secretary Margarito Teves.
Still, Energy
Secretary Raphael Lotilla warned the public not to allow a situation where
the government would have to ration gasoline and diesel to them.
Energy measures’ ignored realities
All these talks of
conservation and possible rationing are not signaling an imminent global
oil shortage, however. Crude supply is plentiful. Spurred by high oil
prices, most oil-producing countries are cranking up their production.
According to Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al Sabah, Kuwait's oil minister, "These
incremental volumes have led to global supply exceeding demand over the
last two years." At the end of July, too, crude stocks in the United
States were at their highest since 1999.
Though some U.S.
refineries are getting bogged down lately by a mismatch in grade of
available crude and what they can refine (they prefer “sweet” crude, not
“sour) and from sheer overwork, and despite so-called threats in Iran, the
world is still reportedly awash in crude. Speculation, according to The
Economist, is the main driving force of the unprecedented oil price hikes.
On one estimate, it reported that $22 billion of net new investment has
entered the oil futures market this year, $8 billion of it flooding in
since the end of June. As a result, The Economist said, forward prices
have risen by even more than spot prices.
Over the past 18
months, the world has seen oil prices shoot up from $40 to $50, then to
$67 a barrel, and still, analysts have $70 and beyond in their sights. The
biggest winners here are the oil companies –- the global oil companies and
in the Philippines, the local oil companies which are mostly global oil
majors’ subsidiaries and affiliates.
When oil was
averaging $50 a barrel in 2004, it was already adjudged as “especially
good for oil companies” by Forbes in its latest report on Global 500
corporations. Profits keep gushing, exclaimed Forbes, noting how “high oil
prices pushed up revenues and earnings of energy companies.”
For example, the
Royal Dutch Shell, despite widely publicized reserve trouble, saw its
revenues increase by 33 percent and profits soar to 46 percent in 2004.
Chevron and Total, which ranked Nos. 11 and 12 respectively in the top
Global 500 companies, saw their revenues grow by 29 percent. Chevron’s
profits leapt to an amazing 84 percent. British Petroleum (BP), No. 2
among global corporations, reported that their profits increased by 50
percent in 2004. Third-ranking ExxonMobil posted $25.3 billion in profits
– a record-breaking amount of money for any global 500 company, according
to Forbes.
Some of these global
oil giants are in control of the Philippines’ Big Three (Shell, Caltex and
Petron), and even of the newcomers like Total. Royal Dutch Shell controls
Pilipinas Shell, ChevronTexaco owns Caltex Philippines, and Saudi Arabian
Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), which has joint ventures with Royal Dutch
Shell and ExxonMobil in refining and marketing of petroleum products, owns
40 percent of Petron Corporation.
Since these local oil
companies are sourcing their crude oil from their affiliates or parent
companies abroad, they can insulate themselves from the speculative ups
and downs of international market trends in oil.
In fact, according to
Ibon Philippines, these oil companies have been overpricing the public in
the past years, as they took advantage of automatic price hikes allowed
under a deregulated regime. In a review of pump prices from 2000 to 2004,
Ibon found that oil products have been overpriced by a total of PhP3.68
per liter.
Consumer and Oil
Price Watch chairman Raul Concepcion, meanwhile, has accused last week
major oil companies Shell and Petron of “overrecovering” 35 centavos per
liter of diesel and 14 centavos per liter of gasoline. These, even as
Eastern Petroleum president Fernando Martinez was announcing that oil
companies still have “under-recoveries of almost P2 for diesel and P3.50
for gasoline”, so price adjustments of 50 centavos per liter on a weekly
basis are to be expected.
The Arroyo
government’s measures to address the oil price hikes are ignoring these
issues of “overrecovery.” In fact, it totally ignores the matter of local
oil companies’ pricing, or these companies’ profitable local operations as
a result of their extensive vertical integration with parent oil majors.
Shunning regulation of the oil industry, the Arroyo administration simply
resorts to moral suasion to convince the oil companies to raise pump
prices weekly, in staggered basis, to reflect the increases in the world
market.
Alternative measures
The Arroyo government
sounds convinced that, as oft-repeated by Energy Undersecretary Abaya,
rising oil prices are here to stay. In fact, Carlos Alindada, chairman of
the Independent Review Committee on the Oil Deregulation Law, has
recommended that the "DoE should accustom the public that we are now in a
regime of high price increases." The Independent Review Committee has also
blamed devaluation and rising oil prices in the international market as
the culprits in RP’s continuous oil price woes, and not the oil
deregulation law.
But if the government
will scrap the oil deregulation law, and serve as the central importer of
crude oil, the government can minimize, or eliminate, the local oil
companies' practice of transfer pricing (or artificially jacking up the
prices of imported crude oil), according to Ibon Philippines. The
government can also seek out concessionary sellers of crude oil. Ibon
Philippines also calls for developing alternative energy sources, but in a
more systematic and thorough manner.
Sen. Franklin Drilon
has also called on the Arroyo administration to regain control of Petron,
one of the Big Three oil companies in the Philippines, so the government
could directly determine and influence pump pricing.
All these proposals
are dismissed, though, by the Arroyo government. In the case of oil
deregulation law, its independent review committee has already declared it
sound and good for the country’s oil industry. Asked in an oil conference
about the billions of profits freely being reaped by oil companies, the
review committee’s chairman, Carlos Alindada, replied that “the amount is
not the only thing that matters, but the rate of return.”
The DoF has likewise
dismissed Drilon’s proposal for Petron.
The looming oil
crisis is shaping up into another likely trigger for Arroyo's ouster.
Militants have been picketing government offices and gas stations,
branding the Oil Deregulation Law as "executioner" of Filipino consumers,
and blasting Arroyo for not scrapping the law and taking charge of local
pump pricing. Even as the Arroyo government contemplates imposing the
value added tax on petroleum products, a move that would drastically hike
oil prices further, protest actions are reportedly gearing up for a
transport strike.
Even administration
Sen. Joker Arroyo has observed that "while the provincial public could be
indifferent to the impeachment, the national public will be outraged if
prices keep going up.” Which is why even former staunch promoters of the
EVAT law have started describing its potential implementation as
“holocaust-like,” disastrous and “suicidal.”
The Arroyo
administration is now angling for emergency powers, similar to strongman
Ferdinand Marcos’ Batasang Pambansa 73 which was used during the oil
crisis in early 1980s, to have more teeth in dealing with the looming oil
price crisis. Bulatlat
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