More reasons to grieve

While the Filipinos were grieving the demise of our country’s first woman President, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, the “Big 3” oil companies quietly initiated another round of price increases of gasoline, diesel and kerosene effective midnight Tuesday. The small players naturally followed suit one after the other. Gasoline and diesel went up again by another P1 per liter while kerosene increased by 50 centavo per liter.

Only last week, Shell Philippines, Chevron and Petron jacked up their oil prices by as much as P2 per liter. This sudden jump of domestic oil prices came a few hours after President Arroyo delivered her ultimate state of the nation address in Congress.

Thus, no less than the President’s congressman-son, Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, chairman of the House Committee on energy, summoned the next day the representatives of the “Big 3” and the rest of the local oil industry players to a public hearing.   

Again, our domestic oil industry players pointed to the world oil market where the prices of crude oil, which we import from abroad — continue to rise. And for the nth time, we, consumers, have to bear the brunt of these international market forces following the deregulated oil industry law within which they operate here in our country.

Unless the government truly flexes its muscles against “predatory” pricing as prohibited by this law — if any is committed by these oil companies — we could only count on Congress to take up the cudgels for us consumers to effectively enforce the intent and spirit of this law.

The government is not all helpless to check against any suspicions of cartel-like pricing by these oil firms. The same law provides enough police powers for the Departments of Energy, Trade and Industry, Justice, among other state agencies, to go after such violations of this law.

But then again, as repeatedly echoed by Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, officials of these government agencies can only do so much to ensure the fullest enforcement of this law. Unless this Oil Deregulation Law is amended to give the State more power to better protect the oil consumers, the finger pointing goes back to Congress. 

At the public hearing by the House Committee on energy last week, representatives from the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) insisted the domestic oil price is P8 per liter higher than it ought to. On the other hand, DOE representatives at the House hearing explained that their own calculations showed the P2 per liter gasoline price increase last week was, in fact, lower than it should be increased by P5 per liter.

We heard from the grapevine that this renewed public friction over the conflicting computations on the domestic oil pricing scheme between NEDA, headed by Economic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto and the DOE headed by Reyes have reportedly reached a breaking point. Recto has reportedly submitted an irrevocable resignation because he felt he was not getting Palace support for his pro-consumer stand on the oil pricing. 

Adding to his woes, Recto is allegedly frustrated also for the DOJ’s prosecution of his younger brother, former Batangas Vice Governor Ricky Recto as co-accused on murder and frustrated murder filed against him by former Batangas Gov.Armando Sanchez. The Batangas lower court had issued, in fact, warrants of arrest against ex-Vice Gov.Recto and his other co-accused.

Former Senator Recto, though, is among those being reportedly eyed by the administration to be fielded as one of their 12-man senatorial line-up in the coming May 2010 elections. It would actually be a return bout for Recto, who ran but lost in his re-election bid during the May 2007 polls. Reyes is also rumored to be preparing for his own political plans to try his mayoral bid in Taguig City in next year’s local elections.

In the meantime, the House public hearing on the oil price hike issue will resume next week. But while both chambers of Congress suspended their sessions this week to observe the national mourning for the death of our late President Aquino, the oil companies gave us another reason to grieve when they implemented another round of weekly price hikes.

But yesterday, we got a reason to be elated after the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced a reduction by P4.10 per kilowatt-hour (kwh) in the bill of their customers effective this month. The Meralco bared the reduction of this month’s billing would be lower by 16.34 centavo per kwh from the July billing. The cheaper electricity price this month was largely due to the rainy season because power generation is largely sourced from hydroelectric power plants of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and independent power producers (IPPs). 

After this piece of good news, we are also warned to brace for possible electricity increases in the coming months after Meralco and Napocor reportedly filed separate petitions for rate hikes before the Energy Regulatory Commission. Meralco asked for P0.03 per kwh increase while Napocor sought for P1.51 per kwh increase for its Luzon-grid to recover from consumers the higher cost of producing electricity.

The Senate finally approved what could be a landmark piece of legislation that would effectively help bring down the cost of electricity in the country. The Senators passed last week Senate Bill (SB) 3148 that seeks to lower government “royalties” or State share from the use of indigenous sources of energy such as natural gas reservoir in the country.

From the consumers’ point of view, it would lower our monthly electric bills by as much as 30 percent if this heavy tax burden passed on to electricity users by power generators is removed. SB 3148 is the pet bill of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile who has vowed to see its approval into law before they wind down their sessions this year. Its counterpart measure at the Lower House is authored by Cagayan Rep. Salvacion Ponce-Enrile, wife of his son Jackie.

With Charter Change initiatives reportedly dead (for the moment) in the House, these pending energy bills like SB 3148 would hopefully become the lawmakers’ priority legislation before Congress adjourns on Oct.16. Only then shall we grieve no more over our country’s high energy cost.