Meeting with the top people of Pres. Duterte

It’s not everyday that we are able to meet with the top leaders of our government and that’s exactly what we did last weekend. On Saturday night, we attended the private dinner for Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte together with the local executives of Cebu at the Pacific Ballroom of the Waterfront Hotel. Earlier in the morning, Pres. Duterte was in Cebu on Saturday for the ceremonial start of the Alegria Oilfield, which covers a total area of 197,000 hectares with 42,749 hectares devoted to the production area.

It was only last March when Secretary Alfonso Cusi and a Chinese company have jointly declared an oil field in Alegria town in southern Cebu to be commercially viable, with reserves of oil and natural gas that could last until 2037. It is operated by the China International Mining Petroleum Company Limited (CIMP). The exploration of the Alegria Oil Field and drilling activities started only in 2009.

In that joint statement, the DOE said the oil field holds an estimated 27.93 million barrels of oil (MMBO), with a possible production recovery of 3.35 MMBO, or a conservative estimate of 12 percent of total oil in place/reserves. For natural gas, about 9.42 billion cubic feet (bcf) reserves were found, with the recoverable resource estimated at 6.6 bcf, or about 70 percent of total natural gas in place/reserves.

Pres. Duterte only had one important message to the people of Alegria, to prepare themselves for the “massive migration,” this happens when oil is discovered that is of commercial value. Indeed this is very true. When oil was discovered in Texas, many places in that State started to experience a boom. Even in the days when the oil prices skyrocketed during the ’70s because the Arabs nationalized their oil industry, Texas still boomed because many oil industry hands lived in Texas. Something like this would surely happen in the sleepy town of Alegria, 112 kms south of Cebu City.

There have been many hits and misses, mostly misses about finding oil in Cebu. When I was a kid, my parents had a Rotary Club excursion to Toledo because of an alleged oil find. We did see oil gushing out of the ground, but it turned out that this was not of any commercial value. But the company Redeco made a killing in the stock market. The last one was a natural gas find that was produced in La Libertad, Bogo City, Cebu, 100 kms north of Cebu City, which was started a few years ago but was halted due to lack of supply. But finally, we now have oil in Alegria, which Pres. Duterte inaugurated by opening an oil valve as a way of blessing this oil find.

Pres. Duterte was also here to grace the formal opening of the Philippine National Games (PNG) at the Cebu City Sports Center. Then he went to the Pacific Ballroom of the Waterfront Hotel for a private dinner with the local executives of Cebu where some 300 plus people were in attendance. I greeted former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA) who was seated with Pres. Duterte. The last time I saw the former President was when she visited me in the isolation room of my house, two weeks after my kidney transplant a year ago. GMA has always been a friend of our family.

Since the President was just nearby and was having dinner, I chatted with him but not about any important subject but about motorcycles. Back then Mayor Duterte rode a Yamaha Virago and we had the same kind of bike. Then the President spoke for nearly two hours with no huge news to report. But reiterated that Daanbantayan Mayor Vicente Loot was still in the drug trade saying in the vernacular, “Kasi, alam ko wala kayo in possession…if you were just a warehouse. But remember General Loot, your house was flooded with drugs sa imong kwarto. Huwag na tayong maglokohan dito.”

On Sunday, Pres. Duterte went to the town of Tabogon 80 kms north of Cebu City to visit his 3rd degree nephew Mayor Zigred Duterte of Tabogon the first time that this town had a visit from a President. We expect Pres. Duterte to return to Cebu on June 7th the planned date for the blessing of the spanking new Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), which is a year ahead of its scheduled opening.

On Sunday, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Assistant Sec. Michael Lloyd Dino invited the Cebu media for lunch at the Tin Gow Restaurant of the Waterfront Hotel to meet with Special Assistant to the President Bong Go and Communications Secretary Martin Andanar. It was the first time I met with Sec. Bong Go and we really had a pleasant talk as we both talked in Binisaya. When asked by the Cebu media if he was running for Senator, Bong Go answered in Bisaya, “In sugod ni sa binuang ug ti-ao, ti-ao ni boss! Dili ko kandidato” thus blaming the President for spreading this information of his running. But I believe that he is waiting for the results of the surveys on the standings of the Senators. If he lands on the magic “12” he just might run for Senator! Bong Go is Senatoriable material anyway!

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