Work

I had no way of knowing, ahead of the deadline for turning in this column, what happened in the Senate Monday night. Most people I talked to wish the senators would get back to work instead of turning every stray procedural issue as a life and death struggle between the contending factions.

There have been rumors swirling of yet another coup in the chamber. As it is, the Cayetano-led majority is still in the process of finalizing committee assignments.

Last week, the Sotto-led minority decided to walk out of the session, depriving the chamber of a quorum to conduct business. Without a quorum, the majority cannot even resort to the rare measure of forcibly returning the minority to the session hall to enable work to be done.

Should the minority insist in denying the chamber a quorum, the Senate will be paralyzed. A vital institution of our democracy will be like a ship caught in the doldrums, held hostage by the minority denying a quorum by concerted absence.

Last week’s walkout happened when the minority stood to lose a vote on a procedural issue: allowing senators to vote remotely. They prevented that vote from happening, muttering something inane about the “tyranny of the majority.”

For some reason, the minority sees the majority’s effort to reorganize the chamber, appoint people to leadership posts, set priorities and constitute the committees as some sort of assault on democracy. But reorganizing posts in the chamber is exactly what every majority does routinely. This is how democracy works.

But the minority wants us to believe that democracy is under assault because the majority decides to do what every majority does. There is failure in logic here somewhere.

Why does the minority of senators fear reorganization of the chamber? Is it because a Blue Ribbon committee on the flood control mess is scheduled for next Thursday?

In that scheduled hearing, the new majority will bring in resource persons that the previous leadership seemed reluctant to hear. The report of the previous hearings of this committee has not acquired enough signatures to be brought to plenary. Those previous hearings have been condemned as a massive cover-up of the biggest scandal in our corruption-infested history.

The issue of remote participation in Senate proceedings has been linked to the forthcoming impeachment of Vice-President Sara Duterte. Why it should be is a mystery.

Those who want Sara convicted need 16 votes. At the moment, the estimate is that the anti-Sara forces do not have those votes. Remote voting will not change those numbers. If any senator fails to vote, that will not add to those inclined to convict Sara.

If the impeachment trial is the reason why the Senate minority took a hard line on the issue of remote voting, then those who walked out of the session did so on spurious logic. A dogmatic insistence on physical presence for every Senate vote will not beef up the anti-Sara ranks.

The minority needs a refresher course on basic arithmetic. They might rethink using the remote voting issue as their final trench.

But beyond the arithmetic of it all, the minority seems afflicted with political paranoia. They seem to see a sinister move in everything the majority espouses. They see a cunning political maneuver in every majority-initiated move.

Unless that paranoia is cured, the Senate can do no work.

Depleted

There will be a pretty significant rollback in fuel prices today. Enjoy it. The good times will not last.

Over the past few months, oil prices have been elevated. But they have not spiked as much as expected because the US and some of the other industrial economies have been drawing on their strategic petroleum reserves. This helped moderate the price spikes. Those reserves are now depleted.

Should the troubles in the Middle East continue, which is likely, the strategic reserves will hit what is called the “operational floor.” This happens this month or the next. When the “operational floor” is hit, the strategic reserves could no longer function as shock absorbers for oil prices.

A number of senior executives of the world’s largest oil companies are warning that later this June or in July, Brent crude could spike to $150 or $160 per barrel. This is nearly 50 percent more that prevailing crude oil levels.

According to Goldman Sachs, global oil inventories plunged a record 8.7 million barrels per day during the month of May. JPMorgan calculates that only 0.8 billion barrels remain realistically available before operational stress happens.

We are therefore looking at only a few more weeks of available oil drawn from the strategic reserves. If the blockade at Hormuz continues, the world is looking at a supply crisis.

Over the past few days, tensions in the Middle East escalated. US forces have attacked Iranian bases along the waterway. Iran has retaliated by sending missiles towards Israel and remaining US military facilities around the Persian Gulf. Both Washington and Tehran have rejected drafts for an agreement to end the war.

Even if oil deliveries are somehow normalized tomorrow, there will be enough demand pressure to keep oil prices up as the industrial nations try to refill their strategic reserves. Refining and storage facilities damaged in the course of the war will require even longer time to repair.

$150 per barrel of crude is considered the tipping point that leads to recession.