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MABUHAY!
At last some good news.
After
days of grim headlines, from the sinking of MV Princess
of the Stars with at least 800 people onboard at the
height of Typhoon Frank, to the multibillion-peso damage
from north to south caused by the typhoon, Manny
Pacquiao’s impressive ninth-round knockout of World
Boxing Council lightweight champion David Diaz is a most
welcome lift.
Pacquiao,
the reigning super-featherweight champ, showed such
speed and mastery of the game that make us all proud.
His is yet another proof that if only we put our heart
and mind to any cause, be it sports, food production,
energy conservation and the like, we can do good things.
That is a big IF, and it will take leadership,
determination and a strong arm to get going, especially
since, as one pundit used to say, we have such highly
individualistic streaks as a people that we pull in
millions of directions before we try and strive to go
forward as one.
Well, as
Pacquaio and his team showed, we would just have to
try. Again, our congratulations!
Gas from
Gazprom
And now,
to some sobering news. Just as the world was getting
into its “comfort zone” yet again with that
much-heralded summit in Saudi Arabia between the world’s
oil producers and consumers, where the Saudis, the
world’s biggest oil exporter, promised to pump up
production immediately by 200,000 barrels with a pledge
to jack it up to a million, as and when necessary, and
the consumers pledged to draw up measures to encourage
more energy efficiency, we are faced with seemingly
unstoppable oil-price hikes. Why? What is happening?
By the
weekend, oil futures were about to breach the
$150/barrel mark-up by more than $10 from the presummit
price. That came truly as a shock for most, including
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec)
members, all of whom, except Libya, were supportive of
the Saudi move to ease up the world’s anxiety over the
rampaging prices.
But that
was no surprise for Alexei Miller, the savvy (some say
pugnacious) chief executive of the Russian
state-controlled gas conglomerate Gazprom.
In a
recent interview in the Financial Times, Miller jabbed
that the oil cartel “had, in effect, lost control of the
market,” noting that “not a single decision has been
passed of late that would really influence the global
oil market. . . .” He proceeded to advise that the world
“was now undergoing a great surge in oil and gas prices
. . . which will end with prices at a radically new
level. . . .”
More
critically, Miller notes that many major oil-producing
countries have all about reached their peak extraction
capacities and “are limited in their ability to vary
their production volumes.” He, too, is of the opinion
that a good part of the extra oil or gas which may be
produced by the Opec majors are, like Russia, getting
sucked into their own domestic markets, resulting from
the frenetic pace of internal development.
Particularly cited are the United Arab Emirates with
Dubai and Abu Dhabi, not to mention the other emirates
competing for oil and energy to fuel their nonoil
business expansion, and even Saudi Arabia, which is bent
on decoupling itself from its economy’s oil-and-gas
foundations.
As
Miller himself candidly notes, “Europe and Asia have
encountered a new, powerful competitor, which is the
Russian domestic market.”
He is
standing by an earlier prediction that the price of oil
would reach $250 a barrel by next year, almost double
that of this year’s high. Whew! If that ever comes to
pass, and it may just happen, Miller is not your usual
academic futurist, as he is in a good position to move
the oil-and-energy market—an ambition he has always been
aiming at—and then the world will really witness radical
changes in all aspects and at all levels.
We will
have to look east, to Siberia in the Russian Far East,
not just the Middle East, for our energy needs. It may
be Miller’s time soon as we talk gas with Gazprom.
Quite
apart from talking gas with Miller’s Gazprom, which
should be looked into soonest for our increasing energy
needs, we should hitch our exploration and production
efforts to the group’s ambition to be, as he puts it,
“not just a major company in the world, but the most
influential in the energy business,” as he targets to
reach a market capitalization of $1,000 billion, almost
twice that of Exxon Mobil, currently the world’s biggest
oil company.
The guy
is talking about accessing the North American market
from its Shtokman project after consolidating its major
role as a principal gas supplier for Europe and the old
Soviet republics by wresting control from its partners,
Royal Dutch Shell over the $20-billion Sakhalin 2
gas-and-oil project, and British Petroleum over the TNK-BP
partnership over the Kovykta field in eastern Siberia.
The
group is loaded and we are told that it is looking far
and wide, from Nigeria in Africa to Papua New Guinea
and, possibly, triangulate the Philippines, South China
Sea and Sabah-Malaysia-East Timor-Indonesia areas.
So let
the cooperative conversations begin before we get
unhinged from the loop.
Woe unto
regulators
Even
before we could stop gnashing our teeth over the seeming
inertia, not to mention the seeming helplessness of our
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) regulators on the
matter of galloping power rates prompted, we are again
witness to another case of apparent regulatory capture.
As with
the power and energy sectors, the regulators of the
shipping industry—from the Maritime Industry Authority
(Marina) to the Coast Guard to the Insurance
Commission—seem to have been captured by the industry
players themselves. The ongoing investigation into the
sinking of the MV Princess of the Stars has so painfully
brought to the fore the blatant shortcomings of the
regulators to rein in the abuses and malpractices in
place, that we are not only moved to tears, we are about
to encourage the bombing of the headquarters of these
offices. Pambihira talaga (It is truly wrenching)!
It is
bad enough allowing a ship full of people and full of
all kinds of cargoes, including that toxic endosulfan,
to sail into the rough seas with not even a working
radio on hand.
Now, we
are being told that the Coast Guard and Marina have not
even updated all ships with their latest orders and are
wrangling over who is to blame for such a snafu. Then,
we are being treated with this snap that the insurance
cover for the ship, its passengers and cargo are limited
or has not been renewed at all.
Indeed,
with such telling snafus, are how can we trust our
regulators? It is time we not only revisit the laws and
rules on shipping, in particular, but get the regulators
out to pasture. They have simply outlasted their
welcome.
And
while we are in a shuffling state, why don’t we try the
tack earlier proposed by Makati Rep. Teddyboy Locsin for
the government to temporarily take over the operations
of Sulpicio Lines to ensure that we do not unduly punish
those who depend on it for day-to-day needs? (We are
told it controls 40 percent of the country’s bottoms and
is the only major transport link for many islands and
areas.) At the same time, let’s determine whether it is
true that we have neglected the proper and responsible
development of this critical sector for sometime.
As
former senator Johnny Flavier would say, “Let’s do it. .
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