The woman tasked to lead Malampaya, the country’s energy crown jewel, has a name similar to that of a popular 90s singer, known for her love songs and sweet and teeny-bopper image.
But make no mistake. Prime Energy’s new managing director Donnabel Kuizon-Cruz is actually a highflying science achiever. She is a chemist, a magna cum laude chemistry graduate from the University of Santo Tomas and the topnotcher of the 2000 National Chemist Licensure exams.
Add to that are decades of experience at Shell Philippines Exploration Corp. (SPEX), the company that led Malampaya operations for decades.
She succeeds Sebastian Quiñones Jr., the man who is also armed with decades of experience running Malampaya as managing director of SPEX. Quiñones, in turn, will continue to serve as senior advisor, member of the advisory council and director in the board of Prime Energy.
Prime Energy, a subsidiary of Enrique Razon’s Prime Infrastructure Capital, now operates the Malampaya deep water gas-to-power project in Palawan.
And it’s not just Cruz and Quiñones who are part of Prime Energy. The management team and operations staff are mostly, if not all, formerly with SPEX. This means they have with them depths of experience and knowledge in running Malampaya and other Shell operations in the Philippines and beyond.
Against this backdrop, I can’t help but wonder why former Philippine National Oil Co. president Eduardo Mañalac is questioning the new team’s competence and experience.
Clearly, Mañalac is shooting from the hip because if you look at the present team, it’s practically the same and even better. More SPEX veterans will be coming in, my sources said.
Razon, the no-nonsense businessman that he is, knows better than to put in people who know nothing about oil & gas exploration.
Questions
In a television interview with ABS-CBN last week, Mañalac raised questions on the 15-year extension of the Malampaya contract and the capability of the Razon-led consortium.
For sure, anyone can raise questions on any contract entered into by the government. It is our right as citizens. The former PNOC chief did that too in the past when he questioned the financial capability of Davao-based businessman and Duterte ally Dennis Uy a few years back, in operating Malampaya.
But this time, Uy’s company is no longer leading the consortium after Razon’s Prime Infra entered the picture and acquired Uy’s controlling stake in the Malampaya group.
Notice, too, that Uy wasn’t even in Malacañang last week when President Marcos and representatives of the Malampaya consortium signed the 15-year extension of the Malampaya contract.
Thus, to simply throw issues with no basis would be unfair to the hardworking men and women of Malampaya. Beyond the veteran executives are nameless men and women risking their lives and working at the hulking and sprawling Malampaya platform to make sure that the gas field would continue to supply almost 40 percent of Luzon’s power requirements.
‘Para sa Bayan’
Razon, not surprisingly, won’t have any of it. Staunchly defending his team, the ports and casino tycoon lashed back at Mañalac.
“Para sa Bayan. This is the daily mantra of the people behind the Malampaya project. Maybe you can learn a thing or two from our pool of world-class talent running the project who you so callously imply to be incompetent and inexperienced. These are the same people working tirelessly to achieve our vision of energy security and independence,” he said in a strongly worded statement last week.
And that wasn’t all.
Razon also questioned Mañalac’s agenda, who also said the government, through PNOC, should have just taken over the deal so that it can enjoy 100 percent of the earnings from the gas field instead of just getting a 60 percent share.
Mañalac said keeping it in the hands of the private sector would translate to “losses for the government.”
But Razon said it is was “appalling to hear Mañalac argue for the supposed ‘losses for the government or the Filipino people’ when we know that he is the same character who brokered the tripartite agreement for Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) among the Philippines, Vietnam and China, essentially compromising Philippine territory by allowing the two countries to explore our natural resources.”
The tycoon was referring to the 2005 JMSU which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional early this year.
“To what degree are you patriotic as you advocate for the state’s acquisition of a vital power asset, despite having a questionable history of attempting to compromise Philippine territory? Whose interests are you truly serving, Mr. Mañalac?” Razon said.
For the first time, the Malampaya consortium is now an all-Filipino group and they’re not walking into this blindly.
With a team of veteran SPEX people, the consortium knows every single valve, knows how to interpret every seismic data and everything else that has to do with Malampaya.
It is looking at three wells with very good chances of yielding more gas.
Marcos to Marcos
President Marcos is right in extending the contract to operate Malampaya because we don’t have an alternative yet. It was his father Ferdinand Marcos Sr. who actually laid the foundation for the development of indigenous petroleum resources.
But it shouldn’t stop here and this is perhaps the big question we must all ask.
What happens after Malampaya? What happens when the wells dry up? What is the Marcos administration’s energy policy, moving forward?
More importantly, will Marcos accelerate and support the transition to renewable energy? That we’ll have to wait and see and when that finally happens, let’s hope it’s not too late.
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Email: eyesgonzales@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.