The recent round of oil price hikes has prompted five militant party-list representatives to file three separate bills “to address the problematic oil industry squarely and regulate oil price increases in the country.”

Representatives Crispin Beltran of Anakpawis, Teodoro Casiño and Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna, and Liza Maza and Luzviminda Ilagan of Gabriela filed on November 6 House Bills (HB) 3029, 3030 and 3031, respectively to “give government the teeth” to prohibit oil companies from further increasing pump prices of oil products.

The legislators said oil prices had risen by as much as 258 percent since Gloria Arroyo assumed power in 2001. The most recent increase was from P42.73 to P46 per liter on November 16.

“We… criticize the Arroyo administration for rendering the Filipino people defenseless against the continued oil price increases,” the legislators said in a joint press statement released on November 22.

All three bills have passed first reading in the Lower House.

Regulate oil industry
Aiming to regulate the oil industry, HB 3029 or “An act regulating the downstream petroleum industry and for other related purposes,” seeks to repeal Republic Act (RA) 8479 or the Oil Deregulation Law, which was passed during the Ramos administration.

RA 8749 supposedly sought to decrease prices by increasing competition and lifting certain government regulations, like price control, over the oil industry. Recent figures cited by the legislators, however, show that pump prices of oil products have increased by about 535 percent since the oil deregulation law was enacted on April 1996, as the said law allowed oil companies to increase prices without government authorization.
 
In a Collegian interview, Casiño said the deregulation of oil industries did not work because it only strengthened the power of oil cartels, thereby affirming the “oligopoly” of local oil corporations.

“Nagsasamantala ang local oil cartels,” he said. “‘Pag tumataas ang presyo sa world market, automatically tumataas dito. Lumalabas tuloy na overpriced ‘yung oil natin.”

Centralizing procurement
HB 3030 or “An act instituting centralized procurement of petroleum in the country,” meanwhile, aims to nationalize oil industrialization to diminish the country’s dependence on oil imports.

A recent United Nations report noted that the Philippines is one of the countries most susceptible to oil price shocks because it is heavily dependent on oil imports. At present, 90 percent of  the local oil being sold in the country comes from transnational oil corporations like Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron-Texaco, and Exxon-Mobil.

The legislators pointed out that Filipinos are defenseless against oil price shocks and are being pushed into “abject poverty.”

To weaken these price shocks, HB 3030 plans to create reserve supplies of oil in the country to safeguard Filipinos from drastic price increases in the world market and prevent local corporations from “falling prey to further monopoly pricing and manipulation.”

Re-acquire Petron
Re-acquiring “valuable” government shares in Petron Corp. as an “urgent and long-term response to the looming oil crisis,” is the goal of HB 3031 or “An act renationalizing Petron Corp.”

Forty percent of government shares in Petron were sold on December 1993 to Saudi Aramco, an oil company fully-owned by the Saudi Arabian government, as a part of the privatization scheme set up by the Ramos administration to deregulate the oil industry. At present, the government only owns 40% of Petron, while 20% are divided among 200,000 shareholders.

The legislators said the co-equal majority ownership of Petron by the government and Aramco does not benefit Filipino consumers, as it permits the latter to control Petron’s local oil prices “in the same way as the big transnational corporations.”

There is a need, therefore, for the government to re-acquire Petron “to ensure public welfare through fair and regulated prices,” the legislators said.

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