Semirara mine’s fate

Everyone is watching with bated breath the upcoming bidding for the contract to operate the sprawling Semirara coal mine in Antique, which will likely happen this month, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said.

There are more than enough reasons why this is highly anticipated. After all, Semirara mine is an island of coal, accounting for over 90 percent of the country’s local output. Any delay in its operations could disrupt supply to users – from cement plants to power facilities and more.

It’s complicated

The Department of Energy (DOE) said the bidding is pushing through once it completes refinements to the bidding rules even as the Consunji-led Semirara Mining & Power Corp. (SMPC), the current operator, has pushed back against sharing asset data with rival bidders.

SMPC sought court protection against DOE’s demand to disclose proprietary info, including list of assets.

It has asked a Makati court for protection against the repeated demands of the DOE to disclose the information which the department plans to share with other bidders.

Through four separate letters, the DOE has asked SMPC to submit detailed information on its geological and technical data and a detailed list of equipment and assets used in the mine site, including those specially reconfigured to manage an intensified river-strength flow of water into the Acacia mine, SMPC said.

However, the company said that since the company owns these assets by virtue of its coal operating contract and the Coal Development Act or PD 972, these assets will not be made available for the use of other bidders and should therefore not be considered in their bid submissions.

DOE, however, contended that once SMPC has recovered its costs, the equipment it acquired become government owned.

But SMPC maintained that all assets outside the production and exploration areas, and all equipment removed from the same, within one year from the end of the contract remain with the company.

An island transformed

I can understand why the Consunjis are pushing back against the DOE’s demand.

This is not a small matter. As someone who has covered the energy beat including SMPC and who has visited Semirara Island itself, I am not surprised that SMPC is standing its ground regarding its proprietary work done on the island.

The Consunji Group, after all, has spent decades transforming the island through tedious work, a series of hits and misses, gains and losses and dizzying engineering work just to bring the mine site to where it is now, compared to when they first found it.

I have visited the island a few times and it was as if I stepped inside the pages of a National Geographic issue about the Carboniferous era, some 20 million years ago, where pressure from rocks caused the earth to tremble and change the underground layers of organic material into coal.

The site is sprawling and huge. Think Jurassic Park but instead of dinosaurs, imagine an industrial hive with heavy machinery and long and labyrinthine conveyor belts that serve as the site’s arteries. These belts with their huge stackers carry the coal from point to point.

There are many other things you will see on the island – heavy equipment, haul trucks, earthmovers and four-wheel drive vehicles.

This is set against a backdrop of dense forests and wild flora and fauna – lush trees, plants and vegetables and even an aviary filled with birds of varied colors – nestled on rugged, uneven terrain.

But as I learned during my visits there and which I wrote about in a book about Semirara titled “Transforming an Island,” this giant patch of earth didn’t use to be like this.

Semirara was once a gloomy island, mired in poverty and desperation because it was isolated and forgotten. Some of the locals called it a God-forsaken place back then.

The Consunjis bought into Semirara Coal Corp. in 1997. At the time, Semirara was deep in debt, producing only 700,000 tons of coal a year, below the break-even level of 1.5 million tons, and dirty at that. Napocor, its sole customer then, did not want to buy the coal because it was dirty with metal, stones and rocks.

Back then, the mine had not been properly engineered. There was uncontrolled seepage of water into it.

But the Consunji Group identified the problems and spent years resolving them.

“The results were dramatic. From less than a million tons in 1997, production grew to nearly 20 million tons a year in 2025,” tycoon Isidro Consunji once said.

SMPC said its petition is not intended to stop or delay the bidding process but merely to get clarity on a legal issue that may impact its legal and financial interest.

It also believes the bidding process is best served when each participant undertakes its own technical studies and proposes its own approach and be evaluated based on it.

Lessons

As I said, it’s quite complicated.

Sec. Garin and her team will be making one of the most important decisions of her career in determining the winner of the bidding for Semirara. 
I hope that whoever emerges as the winner should be able to do even better work on the island and possesses both the financial and technical capability.

It’s also the government’s chance to introduce improvements to the operating contract if necessary and to improve how they conduct biddings for such massive projects.

Semirara mine’s fate hangs in the balance for now but we’ll soon find out what happens next.

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