[environmental disaster] petron’s alleged kickbacks and obscene profits fuelling the catastrophe

All the words in the world are not going to get that tanker off the ocean floor and 450 000 litres are ready to spill now. Until that tanker's salvaged, all talk of who's responsible and how deeply Petron is into graft, all such talk is just so much oil on the water

After that, Sunshine Marine Development Corp., the owner of the Solar I, which sank off Guimaras two weeks ago, needs the most rigorous investigation into how they could commission such a derelict ship through such an environmentally sensitive area on such a mission.

Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources investigating the oil spill have promised to release the results of their inquiry sometime this week.

Oh yes? Like National Power Corp. off Semirara island last year? The NAPOCOR barge spilled 364,000 liters of fuel and ruined vast stretches of the coast of Antique province.

The cleanup has been haphazard and ineffective, the spill happened right smack in the middle of the monsoon season but much worse is that they plus Greenpeace are expending their energy on ‘why it happened, how to prevent another etc. and meanwhile:

450 000 litres lie in nine tanks on the ocean bed, the metal sides of those tanks are now in the process of rust deteriroration and there’s an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Now. Right now.

Petron Corp. sources described the obsolete, single-hull tanker as a disaster waiting to happen. It was carrying 2.1 million liters of oil when it sank in the Guimaras Strait. As of noon Friday, the Philippine Coast Guard estimated that over 200,000 liters of oil have already leaked into the waters of Western Visayas.

Some 1.9 million liters remain in the tanker’s nine other compartments. But if the vessel is not raised soon, the remaining oil could also spill out and cause even more widespread destruction.

The problem is that there are others with Petron moving through the archipelago [see Black Quill’s queries here]. How can Petron, whose motto is “fuelling success”, jointly owned by the Philippine government and Saudi Aramco, operate this way?

Answering that question will require looking into who approves multimillion-peso tanker contracts. There is talk in industry circles of kickbacks and “syndicates,” which not only allow vessels of questionable seaworthiness to service

Insiders allege but it can’t be proved, that Petron is also into hijacking and smuggling. And the owner, Sunshine Marine Development Corp., should be investigated better than the Exxon Valdez was 17 years ago.

Petron controls 38 percent of the Philippine market and their net income last year was P5.765 billion. And yet they say they can’t afford the cost of the cleanup and the slavaging of the tanker, which is the greater issue, truth be told.

Information from Dan Mariano, Oil and Gas and others