THE Department of Energy (DOE) is consulting with government lawyers on how best to deal with the temporary restraining orders (TROs) issued by local courts suspending implementation of the agency’s fuel unbundling policy.
DOE Assistant Secretary Leonido Pulido said on Wednesday the agency is in discussions with the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on whether to file for a motion for reconsideration or wait for the TROs to lapse.
“The…meeting with OSG is critical because we need to meet a decision point to decide if it is practical to appeal the TRO and file a motion for reconsideration or just wait for the [TRO] to lapse.
“I’m sure we [could] do enough to convince the relevant courts that the preliminary injunction should not be issued,” Pulido said.
“If you think about it, we might just wait. We have to be careful because we heard that there are more groups that may file more TROs, so we need to know if it is beneficial to appeal only for the purpose of setting some kind of precedent whether the petitioners are entitled for a TRO,” added Pulido.
The Taguig court issued a 20-day TRO on July 3 while the Makati court’s TRO, which also takes effect for 20 days, was issued last June 28.
Pilipinas Shell sought the TRO before a Taguig court while the Philippine Institute of Petroleum Inc. (PIP)—composed of Petron Corp., Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., Chevron Philippines Inc., PTT Philippines, Total Philippines Corp. and Isla LPG Corp.—filed for the TRO application before a Makati court.
The TROs effectively stopped the DOE from requiring oil firms to submit a detailed price computation of their weekly price adjustments—whether downward or upward—to the DOE.
“The problem is during the hearing of the preliminary injunction, we cannot implement the unbundling circular during the hearing of the main petition,” said Pulido.
“Without going into the merits of the case, the unbundling circular was issued in the first place since the DOE secretary is of the belief that the asking of information, and not the dissemination of information, is expressly authorized under the oil deregulation law. It is in no way a form of regulation,” Pulido pointed out.
Oil firms: back to regulation
While the oil firms recognized the DOE’s mandate to monitor oil price movements, they expressed the view that the circular leads the industry back to the path of regulation.
“It restricts the timing of price adjustments and requires the submission of critical unaudited information that could be prejudicial to the industry players. The circular is also unclear and administratively impossible to comply with,” Shell said earlier.
Pulido argued, however, that while the oil deregulation law has been beneficial to the country and allowed competition to flourish “it does not mean that it has robbed the secretary or the DOE of its mandate of being able to implement the proper policies under the oil deregulation law.”
That mandate, Pulido stressed, “cannot be fully satisfied unless the department can be given all the information required.”
Image credits: Alysa Salen