Category: erap

Sierra Madre stays, Recto Bank ready for drilling

Looking back on my blogposts on China, I found in this one “our china relations, our u.s. alliance” a quote from Rodel Rodis‘s “What did Erap and GMA promise China?” (originally posted 9 years ago, sometime 2014, last edited 14 March 2021):

… on March 17, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei revealed in a press conference in Beijing that two previous Philippine presidents had made an “unequivocal commitment to China ”that the Philippines would tow away the Sierra Madre from the Ayungin Shoal. China demanded that Pres. Aquino “heed the promises” made by his predecessors otherwise, Hong Lei warned, the Philippines risks losing its “credibility”.

Fastforward to August 2023 when, upon China’s “reminder” that the Philippines had promised to tow away the BSP Sierra Madre from Ayungin, the question was, who made such an “unequivocal commitment”? Not Erap, said Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. Not me, said GMA.

Easy to believe them and disbelieve China that is known to make false claims especially about Philippine territory.  Jarius Bondoc suggests we move on, start drilling for gas and oil sa Recto Bank, now na, before Malampaya dries up.

Drill Recto gas, oil now for our national survival
Jarius Bondoc

Pointless to speculate which of two pro-China presidents promised to remove BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. already rescinded such deal, if it existed at all.

Just drill oil and gas at Recto (Reed) Bank. Do it now, or suffer economic collapse.

Malampaya offshore gas field will dry up by next year; 2027 at the latest. It fuels 40 percent of Luzon’s electricity. With no replacement for Malampaya, Luzon will suffer daylong blackouts.

That’ll be disastrous. Factories, offices, shops, telecoms, trains, schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, churches will close. No work or classes from home either. Foreign investors will leave. Jobs will vanish. Urbanites will flee to provinces for scarce food. Linked to Luzon, even Visayas’ power grid will be disrupted.

Recto has proven reserves. In 2013 the US Energy Information Administration estimated it to hold 5.4 billion barrels of oil and 55.1 trillion cubic feet of gas. That’s 63.5 times more oil and 20.5 times more gas than Malampaya, whose lifespan is only 24 or so years.

“We’ve long known that,” says Benny Gan, retired petroleum geologist of the Department of Energy’s precursor, Office of Energy Affairs. In the 70’s OEA explored Recto’s Sampaguita field, only 250 feet deep. “It’s the main study in a roomful of reports, photos and videos.”

Recto is 120 miles from Palawan, well within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone. It’s 650 miles from Hainan, China’s nearest province, thus outside its EEZ. The Hague arbitral court affirmed that in 2016. China can’t claim it by imagined “nine-dash line.”

Although China snubbed the hearings, it’s bound by The Hague ruling under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Its state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. has no right to drill there.

CNOOC cannot subcontract to private exploration firms, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio says. Shell, Occidental, Exxon, among others, are bound by international law, so will shun CNOOC.

The Philippine government has long awarded Service Contract-72, covering Recto. Manuel V. Pangilinan’s PXP Energy Corp. and subsidiary Forum Energy Ltd. are ready to drill.

Trespassing Philippine EEZ, Chinese gunboats chased Forum’s vessels away several times. In 2020 the Duterte admin contemplated joint exploration with CNOOC. Talks failed as CNOOC’s terms violated Philippine Constitution.

Forum remobilized foreign partners to drill. President Rody Duterte stopped it after receiving a call from Beijing, Carpio recounts. “Twice Forum lost millions of pesos in false starts. Let it proceed now under Philippine Navy protection. National survival depends on it.”

Beijing anticipates drilling resumption. Its naval and coast guard ships, reinforced by maritime militia trawlers, are massing up at Del Pilar (Iroquois) Reef at Recto’s westside. Same at Escoda (Sabina) Shoal eastside. It wants to drive away the beached BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal inside Recto.

Defy China. “Let’s do it the way Malaysia and Indonesia did two years ago,” Carpio proposes.

Beijing also claims Malaysia’s EEZ and Indonesia’s Natuna Isles. Invoking our Hague ruling as support, Malaysia held naval exercises with the US and Australia while drilling oil nearby. Indonesia invited a US aircraft carrier to sail by while drilling in Natuna.

On both occasions Beijing shrieked about owning the entire South China Sea by historical right. Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta ignored it. They’re reaping benefits from their petroleum resources, Carpio notes.

The Philippines can install rigs while holding drills with the US Navy under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. As well, with the British Admiralty because Forum was incorporated in London. A petroleum-sufficient Philippines will ease world demand and prices.

Beijing will avoid military confrontation, Carpio calculates. An attack on Filipino government vessels escorting Forum drillers will trigger the Phl-US Mutual Defense Treaty. China Communist Party’s National Congress and Politburo have decided to take control of SCS by intimidation, not war.

“Oil and gas from Recto will save our economy,” Carpio says. “Let Beijing howl. We’ll have our fuel. What better way to assert our EEZ sovereign rights!”

Sampaguita field can pump petroleum via pipeline 150 kilometers northeast to Malampaya. The latter can in turn pump to Batangas in mainland Luzon via its existing 504-kilometer pipeline.

“If not for us circling Malampaya, China would have annexed it long ago,” a ranking PN officer confides. In 2020 a Chinese warship aimed weapons at a PN patrol there. “We’re ready to defend Recto too,” another admiral assures.

Upon operationalizing Sampaguita, other sovereignty measures can follow:

• Erect an Ayungin lighthouse to replace disintegrating Sierra Madre. The 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct among SCS disputants bars military buildup. A civilian lighthouse is allowable, says geopolitics expert Renato de Castro, PhD.

• Sue China for damages at The Hague or the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea. The Philippines and Forum can compute opportunities lost from China’s menacing since 2007, says international maritime lawyer Jay Batongbacal, PhD.

• Exact recompense for China’s fish poaching and destruction of reef resources, like rare metals and new medicines, at Escoda, Del Pilar and Recto. Also, for concreting nearby Panganiban (Mischief) Reef into an island-fortress since 1992.

The late foreign secretary Albert del Rosario had totaled it at $662 million per year. Assisting him, marine scientist Deo Florence Onda, PhD, calculated the wrecked resources at $353,429 per hectare per year, based on the 2012 Studies on Global Ecosystems by Dutch firm Elsevier, world leader in scientific-technical-medical information.

walang kamatayang pork barrel

so, we’ve been had, we who rejoiced when the supreme court declared the PDAF unconstitutional last november and thought we had heard, seen, the last of it.

Pork Barrel is very much alive and kicking! warns prof. ben diokno.  and, like Dracula, the pork barrel is alive, in another guise, bewails neal cruz.

as it turns out, only 15 of the 24 senators gave up their pork barrel.  9 senators — the cayetano sibs, the estrada-ejercito sibs, lapid, trillanes, recto, and miriam — did not, and instead “realigned” their PDAFs with the budget of one or another line agency, or the calamity fund, in the bicam- and senate-approved 2014 budget that the prez signed into law last december.

senator chiz escudero, chairman of the senate finance committee, and very much the pilosopo lawyer, justifies it thus:

Is the realignment legal or constitutional in the light of the high court’s decision on the PDAF?

Yes, says Sen. Francis Escudero, chair of the Senate finance committee. The realignments (Escudero calls them “amendments”) came before the implementation of the P2.265-trillion national budget, he says.

The high court had declared unconstitutional all provisions of the law that allowed legislators “to wield any form of post-enactment authority in the implementation of the budget.”

But Escudero says the identification of beneficiaries of the realigned PDAF “does not violate” the high court’s ruling. “It’s well within our right to review and approve the budget,” he says. “This is preenactment intervention.”

say rin ni bayan muna partylist rep neri colmenares:

“The Supreme Court was not clear on whether lawmakers could realign the funds or not because it is clear that Congress has the power of the purse and has the prerogative where government money should be spent,” says Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares. “What it was clear on was that lump-sum items should be discontinued and that everything in the budget should be itemized.”

Members of the House had realigned a much bigger amount—P930 billion, including the PDAF. 

at parang tuwang-tuwa lang si senator chiz, as in, tipong naisahan nila ang presidente?

“In accordance with the powers of Congress, all of us can introduce an amendment. That’s our legislative power. If the President submits the budget, we can’t skirt our duty to amend it. What are we, a rubber stamp?” Escudero said by phone, chuckling. 

more like, naisahan ang anti-pork people’s movement, as in, nakahanap sila ng legal loophole (salamat sa supremes?) and it’s as if the people’s outcry against all pork-n-patronage fell on deaf ears.  it’s as if two of the nine senators, estrada and revilla, were not facing charges of receiving substantial kickbacks from fake NGOs identified with the notorious accused napoles.  and it’s as if the other seven senators were themselves untouched by any suspicion of similar kickbacks in the past.

of course, it might be that these realignments no longer allow kickbacks of any sort in any way.  if so, i wish they’d come right out and say it, assure us na, wala na pong kickback.  but of course they won’t because it would be to admit na oo nga, dati ay may kickback.

but, hey, jinggoy estrada, who aligned half his PDAF to the budget of the City of Manila of which his tatay, ex-prez erap, is mayor, is the most unrepentant, defiant, shameless, and brazen of them all.  hiyang hiya naman ako for the senate, who allowed him to gift his tatay’s city hall with a hundred million bucks.  hiyang hiya rin ako for erap, who had no idea daw that it was coming, and who doesn’t have the sense to say no-thanks, kahit out of delicadeza man lang.

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pahabol.  say ng grapevine, the supreme court is poised to rule vs erap in the disqualification case filed by ex-mayor fred lim.  if true, it would serve jinggoy right.

Open letter to Erap: Stop Manila Bay reclamation

By Katrina Stuart Santiago

The votes are in and it is not surprising that you won, Erap.

I imagine that as the congratulations poured in, so have the countless proposals and suggestions on how to run Manila. I’m sure you’re aware that many of these suggestions are premised on hidden agenda and private interests.

I am hopeful about how you might navigate the corruption and palakasan that is intrinsic in offices of power such as yours. You used to say walang kaibi-kaibigan, walang kama-kamaganak. I voted for you then for President. That the city of Manila has elected you into office now is telling of how we all might still believe that you hold in your hands the possibilities for change.

And while there is so much to change, there is no reason at all to change the landscape and seascape of Manila Bay.

Your office has said that you are still studying the reclamation project of the Manila Goldcoast Development Corporation (MGDC), that one that promises to create the Solar City in two years, making land out of water, from the Cultural Center of the Philippines to the US Embassy.

That is the expanse of what we see of the sunset of Manila Bay, every day. That is what this development will be covering up, even as it insists it will create a viewdeck for the public to watch the sunset from.

A manufactured city within the city of Manila will mean disenfranchising the masses, the ones who voted for you. Those masses – and every one of us – can currently sit on Baywalk and watch this same sunset every day, without having to pay a cent, or without needing to get dressed, or being made to feel poor.

But there are countless other reasons to refuse this MGDC reclamation. That it didn’t push through in 1992, the first time it was proposed, speaks of how laws were put in place to preserve Manila Bay and treat it as part of cultural heritage. It speaks of how the task since then has been to save it from further environmental degradation and restore it to its old glory.

It is glory that is about our history, too. Manila Bay is “not just an ordinary waterfront” says Ivan Henares of the Heritage Conservation Society: World War II battles were fought there and galleons docked there 300 years ago. Cultural Center of the Philippines chairperson Emily Abrera has said that the fight is about “preserving a place for our children.” Doris Magsaysay Ho, who fought this same project in 1992 – and with a broad coalition succeeded at stopping the reclamation then – sees Manila Bay and its waterfront as a sacred public space, where Roxas Boulevard “is a promenade accessible to both rich and poor, the space belongs to everyone,” as urban planner Daniel Burnham had envisioned it.

This space as such brings the rich and poor together, and anyone who has even gone to Baywalk to watch the sunset would know how true this is. Here is where the manong selling taho and balut sits with you as you take photos of the bay. Here is where anyone at all might stop and watch the moment pass.

MGDC claims that they will make things better. They claim that they will only improve on things and nothing else. They claim that the bay is dead, and there is no livelihood to be had there. They claim that there is no other way to create development in Manila but by reclaiming land, and Solar City will be a “new economic zone.” In mid-April MGDC threw around numbers like employing 250,000 to 500,000 individuals, as they have been wont to use big words: tourism boom, urban renewal, cultural renaissance.

These are nothing but big numbers and big words that can only be empty if one is to consider that there is no transparency here, and no one knows of how exactly MGDC plans to even engage with the city in this manner.

In fact all we have are their words, and your predecessor’s approval of this plan Erap, – a plan by the way that is so confidential that we are kept in the dark about it.

Meanwhile what is as clear as day is the fact of Manila’s congestion and flooding. What we know is that the lightest rain means an accumulation of water on Roxas Boulevard. What we remember is how homes and families were adversely affected in the Habagat rains last year, as they were by Ondoy and Sendong.

Architect Jun Palafox has said that the disadvantages of doing a reclamation project are many: “it can worsen flooding, block the views of existing waterfront development, harm aquatic resources, environment and heritage historic sites.” Lory Tan of the World Wildlife Fund says that given how “highly vulnerable we are to the worst impacts of climate change” having a reclamation project such as this one can only be dangerous.

Dr. Kelvin S. Rodolfo agrees that this is a bad idea. Given how Metro Manila is subsiding rapidly. The growing population has meant the over-extraction of groundwater, and as such “the local sea level is rising 10 times faster than the rate of sea level rise due to global warming.” This has meant worsened flooding and storm surges, which can only become worse given the threat of stronger typhoons due to climate change.

Dear Erap, it seems to me that no matter the promise of employment, or development, or profits, the lives of the Manileños are more important. There is no proof whatsoever that a reclamation project like MGDC’s will mean no more floods. In fact given how secretive they are about their plans, it seems easier to think that MGDC is hiding something. At the very least, the lack of transparency in the process of signing this contract with the previous Manila government, and the lack of a clear plan, points to a refusal to be held liable for how things might turn out, and the probable adverse effects of the Solar City on the rest of Manila.

Pre-elections, MGDC was full of itself, talking about how no matter who won between you and Alfredo Lim, that they would have the cityhall on their side, and all their plans would push through. MGDC Vice Chair Edmund Lim also blames politics for the delay in the reclamation project, and a recent MGDC press release talks about the project languishing since Cory Aquino’s presidency, and now there is hope in PNoy.

I hope you prove them wrong, Erap

Your office has said that you have yet to study the MGDC proposal, and will take a stand about it when you formally take office.

But studying the proposal is beside the point, Erap. Because to begin with, that contract should not have been signed, that contract not entered.

The MGDC contract was signed with Alfredo Lim’s Manila government, after the latter revoked a 1993 City Council of Manila Ordinance prohibiting any form of reclamation along Manila Bay from the US Embassy to the CCP Complex. Alfredo Lim as mayor had the City of Manila sign that contract with MGDC despite the fact of RA 7586, which states that Manila Bay “should be among areas considered as protected landscape and seascape of national significance.” Resolution 20120-04 of the National Historical Commission also declares Manila Bay and Waterfront as National Historical Landmark which would mean it is protected by the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009.

Your predecessor ignored all these laws when his government signed the Solar City contract with MGDC. The previous Manila city government also ignored both common sense and science in its refusal to believe that between climate change and congestion, storms and floods can only get worse. That Manila government was blinded by the possibility of huge profits, and refused to work at improving what it already had. It also decided to forget how nationally valuable Manila Bay is, not just for those who go and watch the sunset, but also for those who live off and around it.

I’d like to think yours will be a government that will not forget, Dear Erap. Very simply, the task at hand is to cancel that contract altogether, and refuse to sign off on something that your predecessor irresponsibly pushed for.

Dear Erap, kill the Manila Bay reclamation, and you would be making the best first decision as mayor of Manila.

attention, mayor erap! why dan brown chose manila

i was curious about the context, as in, why manila in particular as “gates of hell,” and no one who has ranted about it seems to know, or if knowing, cares to mention it.  so, having received two digital copies in two days, and finding myself home alone, i decided to go for it, i like bestsellers anyway, i like to know what the world is reading, and if i don’t like it, or it’s not my thing, i can always stop, and i do, occasionally.

so i sped through the book — brown’s prose is not for savoring, actually makes me cringe now and again, but he tells a good story.   and Inferno is a good enough story that i could only speed through so much because it’s not only a thriller, cliff-hanger, whatever (brown’s formula works), but also it’s good science fiction, and, heads up, manila, anti-vatican to boot.  population control  (malthus reborn) is brown’s advocacy this time.  so siempre contemptuous of the church’s stiff stand vs contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.  manila, philippines, isn’t that you?

the brief mention of manila comes toward the end of the book na, as part of a flashback telling partly why the character was turned on by the population-control talk of her lover, a “transhumanist” guru.  (post-humanist, more like.)  and, of course, manila, the cradle of christianity in asia, where the bishops have come out fighting, seeking the repeal of the recently passed reproductive health law that women’s orgs had long struggled for, with the support of 7 out of 10 filipinos…  manila, the cradle of christianity in asia, capital of the only country in the world na walang divorce law for the majority, and the rich buy annulments instead…  yes, it makes sense that brown zeroed in on manila, where more and more babies are born into poverty and squalor, no end in sight, and the church dares preach submission to god’s will, or is that, the oligarchy’s will.

of course government officials and bishops are upset, defensive, totoo kasi, hellish naman talaga ang life in the bowels of manila.  not surprisingly new manila mayor joseph estrada is the only one who dares agree with brown, sort of: “Manila is really going to hell. That’s true.”  and i guess only because it reflects, immediately, on the former mayor that he trounced in the last elections.

but you have to wonder what erap has planned for manila.  is it a go for the gold coast reclamation project?  still more “development” for the rich, never mind serious, nay, deadly, environmental concerns for the whole of metro manila?  that would be like throwing the gates of hell wide open, and nowhere to go but the pits.

it’s no way to redeem yourself, erap.

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read Isko Moreno vs. the Manila Bay Sunset, and  Goodbye, beautiful sunset: Groups protest Manila Bay reclamation project, and Manila Bay: Sunset and the law.