DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/20/2012
The final insult to our Mindanaoan brothers and sisters who have politely raised their appeal the past few months to the national political authorities for action on the Mindanao power crisis came via the cancellation of the April 19, 2012 meet by the Joint Congressional Power Commission (JCPC), the body tasked to oversee the implementation of the power privatization law known as the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).
The cancellation, according to its chairman, Sen. Serge Osmeña, was due to the absence of his co-chairman, Rep. Henedina Abad, as well as those of other members who could not confirm their attendance. Given these characters’ track record, the past 10 years of sitting on urgent issues in their respective energy committees, “postponement” is likely a deliberate delay in furtherance of their covert pressure tactics.
While Osmeña takes his easy time, the JCPC is keeping roughly 30 million Mindanaoans waiting in darkness. This is clearly the reason for some Mindanaoans to now take matters into their own hands.
Early Wednesday morning we got an urgent call from veteran political warrior Homobono Adaza. In the midst of handling countless legal cases, from the power plunder and the Corona impeachment to several political-legal-economic issues in tandem with lawyer Alan Paguia, Adaza has decided to spring into action in response to the blatant imperialism of Manila’s elite politicians against the people of Mindanao.
The power summit in Davao where approximately a thousand people from all over Mindanao attended, hoping to have a dialog with BS Aquino III, instead became a forum where they were treated to an imperial dressing down and ordered to “pay up or face blackouts,” and told further to accept the privatization of Mindanao’s “crown jewel,” the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric system.
Then, as if to rub salt on an open wound, Mindanaoans were made to expect some dialog later in the JCPC, only to be so rudely cancelled until the next whim of the man who calls them “spoiled” brats.
Apparently, the evening before, Adaza was already in consultation with numerous Mindanao citizens and political leaders where a consensus was reached that Mindanao should organize again — as it did during the long Marcos period — a political party of its own to redress the grievous shortchanging it has been getting from Manila’s “elite imperialists.” Adaza certainly has had experience on this as he was one of the major organizers of the victorious Mindanao Alliance in the 1970s that catapulted him, Reuben Canoy, and Nene Pimentel to national prominence.
Adaza’s brief on Mindanao’s current predicament reads like an oft-repeated wish list: First, Mindanao has not had sufficient representation in the seat of national political policy, the Senate; second, the Epira issue needs strong Mindanao representation that will not only “appeal” but take decisive political action to repair the damage that has been done; third, as a counter-measure, Mindanao should win a fair share of the Senate seats, at least four of 12, up for grabs in 2013.
The call of Adaza for the “Mindanao Action Party” (MAP) will ring loud and clear to all Mindanaoans; thus, Luzon and the Visayas must support this for their own sake.
We have seen the fighting spirit of our Mindanao brothers, unspoiled by Manila’s politics and pampering which the regional and provincial politicians in the political center have fallen for. Though we don’t know yet if Adaza himself will be a MAP candidate, we hope that more like him from Mindanao will pick up the mantle of being the people’s champion in the coming senatorial elections to show these corrupted national leaders what it means to fight for the people’s cause.
The fundamental strategy I surmise is to consolidate Mindanao’s votes which would be around 11 million today, enough to put MAP’s candidates into the last four slots of the Senate. In 2010, the 12th, and tail-ender TG Guingona, who now sits as a Lopez backstop next to Osmeña, got 9.6 million votes.
Mindanao’s fight now is a national fight, which Mindanao has actually carried on where Luzon and the Visayas found themselves exhausted after 10 years of protesting the Epira. Mindanao is also the final frontier for the foreign and local power oligarchs to subdue, just as it was when the Spaniards and Americans tried to pacify the whole country for their colonial domination but were stopped in Mindanao.
The power oligarchs, through the mouth of Serge Osmeña, are saying they want to raise the power rates in Mindanao to the level of Cagayan de Oro of P7.50 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at this time, which is $0.18 per kWh and higher than even Hong Kong’s $0.14 per kWh. Even if that rate were lower than Manila’s or the national average of $0.23 per kWh today, the aim of the oligarchs is to eventually even all this out to the Manila and national average. These have all been stated in so many words by Energy Secretary Rene Almendras and Serge Osmeña; and with the lopsided Performance Based Regulation (PBR) scheme, rates will definitely go up every three years.
The Mindanao and national struggle to restore truthful, just, and fair electricity rates in generation, transmission, and distribution, as well as the sector’s ownership structure and laws, epitomize everything that has gone wrong with the country under the present “plutonomy,” an economy controlled by plutocrats who also control the present crop of political players ushered in by Edsa I and II’s Yellow mobs. It’s time for a national political “jihad,” a holy war of the people, against these plutocrats and corrupt politicians.
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Electricity and fuel price crisis: Solutions” with consumer advocate Dr. Amanda Cruz and Wilson Fortaleza of FDC; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Friday, April 20, 2012
Surviving the Titanic and the North Korean Rocket
YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
4/16-22/2012
For the past few weeks we have had a crescendo of panic and over acting over the North Korean rocket launch. While North Korea claimed that they were just launching a satellite, the United States and its allies were suspecting and accusing North Korea of developing an offensive ballistic missile.
In trying to avoid South Korean and Japanese airspace, the track of the rocket would pass over the East Philippine Sea close to the Eastern side of Luzon. Actually thousands of satellites, rockets and pieces of space debris are constantly orbiting around the earth all the time.
However, these are already orbiting and not yet falling down to earth. However, in order to send something into orbit at the present level of technology, a series of rocket boosters that detach and fall back to earth are employed. It was the third stage that was supposed to fall east of the Philippine island of Luzon.
However, the North Korean rocket malfunctioned soon after launch and did not get anywhere close to us. The hullabaloo and panic caused more harm to our wellbeing than the rocket that we feared. It was during the over acting in anticipation of the rocket launch that I recalled the natural and man-made disasters that we had not properly prepared for. Some of these had caused so much loss of life.
One glaring example was the collision and sinking of Sulpicio Lines’ Dona Paz and an oil tanker between Batangas, Romblon and Mindoro in December 1987. I was the Commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission at that time. We monitored the compliance by civilian aircraft and ships of laws and regulations pertaining to radio communications and safety.
One of the important regulations then was that ships at sea should monitor the emergency frequency every other fifteen minutes. However, on an overnight trip to Cebu City from Manila, I could not raise any response on the standard Maritime emergency frequency. When I simulated an Emergency Call on board an aircraft over the Visayas, I got a response from a Quantas plane but none from any Filipino aircraft.
When the Titanic was sinking in the freezing North Atlantic, the radio operator of the nearest ship, the Californian had turned off his radio and had gone to sleep. The next nearest ship was the Carpathia but it took her almost till morning to get to the survivors in the lifeboats. In the freezing waters, a person would die from hypothermia in minutes,
Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The Titanic was the biggest and newest passenger liner in the world. She was owned by the White Star Line (the competitor of the Cunard Line. Both were British.). She was the middle ship in a class of three: the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. She was built by Harland and Wolf in the City of Belfast in the Island of Ireland which was part of the United Kingdom.
She was on her maiden voyage and had just been completed. On April 10, 1912, she left Southampton for Cherbourg in France, Queenstown in Ireland and New York. Just before midnight on April 14, 2012, she hit an iceberg south of Newfoundland. She sank in two hours and forty minutes. She only had twenty lifeboats. They could only carry 1,178 passengers and crew out of 2,224 on board. Following is an account from Wikipedia:
“At 11.40 pm (ship's time), lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline. Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.
“Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. The ship's lifeboats only had enough space to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried its full complement, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. A "women and children first" protocol was generally followed for the loading of the lifeboats and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard.
“Two hours and forty minutes after Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates. As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship split apart between the third and fourth funnels due to the immense strain on the keel. The stern remained afloat for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it. At 2.20 am, it sank, breaking loose from the bow section. The remaining passengers and crew were plunged into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28 °F (−2 °C). Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia or cardiac arrest within minutes or drowned. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had room for almost 500 more occupants.
“Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with her before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic's earlier distress calls. 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic's original destination, while 1,517 people lost their lives.”
Linggoy Alcuaz
4/16-22/2012
For the past few weeks we have had a crescendo of panic and over acting over the North Korean rocket launch. While North Korea claimed that they were just launching a satellite, the United States and its allies were suspecting and accusing North Korea of developing an offensive ballistic missile.
In trying to avoid South Korean and Japanese airspace, the track of the rocket would pass over the East Philippine Sea close to the Eastern side of Luzon. Actually thousands of satellites, rockets and pieces of space debris are constantly orbiting around the earth all the time.
However, these are already orbiting and not yet falling down to earth. However, in order to send something into orbit at the present level of technology, a series of rocket boosters that detach and fall back to earth are employed. It was the third stage that was supposed to fall east of the Philippine island of Luzon.
However, the North Korean rocket malfunctioned soon after launch and did not get anywhere close to us. The hullabaloo and panic caused more harm to our wellbeing than the rocket that we feared. It was during the over acting in anticipation of the rocket launch that I recalled the natural and man-made disasters that we had not properly prepared for. Some of these had caused so much loss of life.
One glaring example was the collision and sinking of Sulpicio Lines’ Dona Paz and an oil tanker between Batangas, Romblon and Mindoro in December 1987. I was the Commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission at that time. We monitored the compliance by civilian aircraft and ships of laws and regulations pertaining to radio communications and safety.
One of the important regulations then was that ships at sea should monitor the emergency frequency every other fifteen minutes. However, on an overnight trip to Cebu City from Manila, I could not raise any response on the standard Maritime emergency frequency. When I simulated an Emergency Call on board an aircraft over the Visayas, I got a response from a Quantas plane but none from any Filipino aircraft.
When the Titanic was sinking in the freezing North Atlantic, the radio operator of the nearest ship, the Californian had turned off his radio and had gone to sleep. The next nearest ship was the Carpathia but it took her almost till morning to get to the survivors in the lifeboats. In the freezing waters, a person would die from hypothermia in minutes,
Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The Titanic was the biggest and newest passenger liner in the world. She was owned by the White Star Line (the competitor of the Cunard Line. Both were British.). She was the middle ship in a class of three: the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. She was built by Harland and Wolf in the City of Belfast in the Island of Ireland which was part of the United Kingdom.
She was on her maiden voyage and had just been completed. On April 10, 1912, she left Southampton for Cherbourg in France, Queenstown in Ireland and New York. Just before midnight on April 14, 2012, she hit an iceberg south of Newfoundland. She sank in two hours and forty minutes. She only had twenty lifeboats. They could only carry 1,178 passengers and crew out of 2,224 on board. Following is an account from Wikipedia:
“At 11.40 pm (ship's time), lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline. Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.
“Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. The ship's lifeboats only had enough space to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried its full complement, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. A "women and children first" protocol was generally followed for the loading of the lifeboats and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard.
“Two hours and forty minutes after Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates. As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship split apart between the third and fourth funnels due to the immense strain on the keel. The stern remained afloat for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it. At 2.20 am, it sank, breaking loose from the bow section. The remaining passengers and crew were plunged into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28 °F (−2 °C). Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia or cardiac arrest within minutes or drowned. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had room for almost 500 more occupants.
“Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with her before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic's earlier distress calls. 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic's original destination, while 1,517 people lost their lives.”
Subsidy for power oligarchs
CONSUMERS' DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/16-22/2012
The Mindanao power crisis has now raged on for months; yet the BS Aquino III government at first refused to act upon the request of Mindanao power consumers and electric cooperatives (EC) to deploy four existing emergency power barges lying idle at several sites. One of these was in Davao, two in the Visayas, and one in Navotas. The Department of Energy (DoE) said it was still waiting to privatize these before they could be used to help Mindanao, with the bidding schedule set in late April.
So what was Malacañang really after throughout this period of procrastination? Was it to give Mindanao’s power consumers no choice but to swallow the “bitter pill,” i.e. the exorbitant power price offered by Therma Marine Inc. (TMI) of the Aboitizes from two power barges it obtained from Napocor at $30 million, later turned around and revalued at $80 million to make it the basis for new power rates? Was it also to give TMI the wherewithal to demand a contract period that ranges from three to five or up to 20 years, with the rate base escalated along with the reappraisal to current replacement cost of the power barges?
Mindanao consumers and ECs have understandably refused to purchase the high priced power of the Aboitizes. This e-mail we received last week from Mr. Jojo Borja, a major stockholder of Iligan Light and Power Inc. (ILPI), highlights the brick wall the BSA III government and the Aboitizes ran into when trying to force Mindanaoans into swallowing such exorbitant electricity prices:
The first part of the e-mail is self-explanatory, but what is striking is Normic’s decision preferring the “rolling brownouts” to paying 50% additional to the Aboitiz’ Group’s TMI which will provide the electricity from two power barges it “bought” from Napocor-PSALM and reappraised from $30 million to $80 million to hike the rate base for its electricity supply, in order to sells its power at P11/kWh compared to the normal P2.60/kWh in Mindanao.
The second part of the e-mail highlights the distorted and corrupt consequences of EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act)--in this case, Iligan City, which acquired the 104-MW BOT power plant transferred from the Alcantaras’ IPP to Napocor and then to the city for non-payment of real estate taxes.
Iligan City had, in fact, wanted to operate the plant for the crisis; but the ERC refused to give it provisional authority and instead approved new capacity at a higher additional cost imposed for the next 20 years.
BSA III started feeling the heat as the public began to understand the issues and see the oppressive and exploitative attempts of government and the oligarchs to blackmail the people of Mindanao on the power issue. Malacañang and the DoE did finally find a solution, announced in the newspapers and summarized in this headline in the Bulletin: “Mindanao Subsidy to Reach P5-B,” based on number-crunching made by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) and Napocor, to cover the months of April, May and June this year with power bought by government from TMI, at a price that the private company wants, with the report stating, “The calculation was in reference to the P0.50 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) average hike in Mindanao blended rates if the power barges and other thermal facilities will be aligned as stop-gap measure to their electricity woes.”
The blended rates are the mix of the high power price from Aboitiz with the nearly free cost of power from the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric system, among others.
BS Aquino, the reports say, will be in Mindanao for the touted Power Industry Summit--purportedly to explore the most immediate and feasible solutions to the grid’s power supply crisis. But from the looks of it, his solution is to subsidize the high profit of the Aboitizes and not the demands of Mindanao power consumers for a fair power rate.
BSA III is extracting from the people’s resources--taxes to be precise--to fund the high power rates of the Aboitizes. The Joint Congressional Power Committee co-chair and Senate committee on energy chairman, Sergio Osmena III, is reported to be averse to the idea of the government extending subsidies just so the power rates in Mindanao could be kept artificially low. He says the government cannot forever submit to consumers’ bid for subsidies while he sheds crocodile tears for the poor alleging that such subsidies take their toll on budget for social services. Of course, we should inform Osmeña that it is his ilk being subsidized and the “lifeline rate” subsidy for the poor are actually charged to paying customers of Meralco and all other paying power consumers.
Other oligarchs are jumping on the bandwagon of the Mindanao power crisis: For some time now, the heir of the Cojuangco political throne, Rep. Mark Cojuangco, has been promoting aggressively the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), which the Fukushima nuclear tragedy put a hold on. Now he and his group are reviving it, using the Midnanao power crisis as an opportunity.
Major national dailies have already headlined this, “Mindanao may go nuke… Region willing to host Bataan power plant or build new one” by Christine F. Herrera of the Manila Standard; but I wonder when such a consultation was ever made. It did quote one businessman and a so-called Agham party-list man Angelo Palmones, who were quick to see the money opportunity. But what they don’t seem to understand is that the BNPP uranium reaction nuke power is already “so last century.” There is now a new and 10,000 times safer nuke energy source, Thorium, which the new nuke powers, China and India, are treading.
Cojuangco reportedly wants a new plant for Mindanao which some reports peg at $10 billion, but that would just be an excuse for the Western nuke power companies to dump the perilous uranium reactor technology and uranium stockpiles on the Philippines.
One late but still welcome development in the national debate on power privatization comes from Rep. Erin Tañada who, as per this report, “Napocor privatization a mistake, says lawmaker,” wants government to return to power generation as solution to Mindanao shortage” in a report by Gil Cabacungan. But, of course, what is right for Mindanao is right for the rest of the country, and we hope more and more ordinary citizens like readers of OpinYon take up the challenge to compel our legislators to free the country from the clutches of oligarchs and demand the EPIRA to be junked, and form a new paradigm of public ownership through such means a cooperativization or consumer ownership of the power sector and distribution utilities.
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Fuel and power solutions” with Dr. Amanda Cruz and FDC; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/16-22/2012
The Mindanao power crisis has now raged on for months; yet the BS Aquino III government at first refused to act upon the request of Mindanao power consumers and electric cooperatives (EC) to deploy four existing emergency power barges lying idle at several sites. One of these was in Davao, two in the Visayas, and one in Navotas. The Department of Energy (DoE) said it was still waiting to privatize these before they could be used to help Mindanao, with the bidding schedule set in late April.
So what was Malacañang really after throughout this period of procrastination? Was it to give Mindanao’s power consumers no choice but to swallow the “bitter pill,” i.e. the exorbitant power price offered by Therma Marine Inc. (TMI) of the Aboitizes from two power barges it obtained from Napocor at $30 million, later turned around and revalued at $80 million to make it the basis for new power rates? Was it also to give TMI the wherewithal to demand a contract period that ranges from three to five or up to 20 years, with the rate base escalated along with the reappraisal to current replacement cost of the power barges?
Mindanao consumers and ECs have understandably refused to purchase the high priced power of the Aboitizes. This e-mail we received last week from Mr. Jojo Borja, a major stockholder of Iligan Light and Power Inc. (ILPI), highlights the brick wall the BSA III government and the Aboitizes ran into when trying to force Mindanaoans into swallowing such exorbitant electricity prices:
Mentong,
According to Barangay Capt. Mateo Cortez who is also Vice President of Normic, they just had a public hearing that was attended by Napocor and NGCP. PSALM did not attend. You may call him and check out the actual status of the cooperatives in Mindanao. They are members of the 33 Rural Cooperatives of Mindanao who instead opted for darkness as they refused to be blackmailed by Therma Marine into signing very expensive long term POWER SALES AGREEMENTS (PSA). With the recent “orders“ of Almendras that they must buy (power from TMI)… they agree(d) but only for one year to give PSALM enough time to repair the four power barges. If Aboitiz will insist on a five-year take-or-pay contract… the cooperatives will rather choose the rolling brownouts.
In the case of Iligan City, ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) ALREADY APPROVED the PSA between Mapalad Energy Generation Corp. and Iligan Light and Power. ERC, in spite of this representation’s (appeals) to it that the consumers of ILPI own a 104-MW (plant) AND THAT ILPI SHOULD NOT BUY 2 units of 7.5-MW inefficient, obsolete diesel power generation plants at P400 million. (But still, the) ERC RAILROADED THE APPROVAL OF AN ADDITIONAL GENERATION COST of P2.23 per kWh for the next 20 years… a rate that will increase after the first year for cost overruns (similar to what TMI did) and every three years thereafter as the value of the obsolete power plants will be reappraised as… allowed by EPIRA.
Jojo
The first part of the e-mail is self-explanatory, but what is striking is Normic’s decision preferring the “rolling brownouts” to paying 50% additional to the Aboitiz’ Group’s TMI which will provide the electricity from two power barges it “bought” from Napocor-PSALM and reappraised from $30 million to $80 million to hike the rate base for its electricity supply, in order to sells its power at P11/kWh compared to the normal P2.60/kWh in Mindanao.
The second part of the e-mail highlights the distorted and corrupt consequences of EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act)--in this case, Iligan City, which acquired the 104-MW BOT power plant transferred from the Alcantaras’ IPP to Napocor and then to the city for non-payment of real estate taxes.
Iligan City had, in fact, wanted to operate the plant for the crisis; but the ERC refused to give it provisional authority and instead approved new capacity at a higher additional cost imposed for the next 20 years.
BSA III started feeling the heat as the public began to understand the issues and see the oppressive and exploitative attempts of government and the oligarchs to blackmail the people of Mindanao on the power issue. Malacañang and the DoE did finally find a solution, announced in the newspapers and summarized in this headline in the Bulletin: “Mindanao Subsidy to Reach P5-B,” based on number-crunching made by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) and Napocor, to cover the months of April, May and June this year with power bought by government from TMI, at a price that the private company wants, with the report stating, “The calculation was in reference to the P0.50 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) average hike in Mindanao blended rates if the power barges and other thermal facilities will be aligned as stop-gap measure to their electricity woes.”
The blended rates are the mix of the high power price from Aboitiz with the nearly free cost of power from the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric system, among others.
BS Aquino, the reports say, will be in Mindanao for the touted Power Industry Summit--purportedly to explore the most immediate and feasible solutions to the grid’s power supply crisis. But from the looks of it, his solution is to subsidize the high profit of the Aboitizes and not the demands of Mindanao power consumers for a fair power rate.
BSA III is extracting from the people’s resources--taxes to be precise--to fund the high power rates of the Aboitizes. The Joint Congressional Power Committee co-chair and Senate committee on energy chairman, Sergio Osmena III, is reported to be averse to the idea of the government extending subsidies just so the power rates in Mindanao could be kept artificially low. He says the government cannot forever submit to consumers’ bid for subsidies while he sheds crocodile tears for the poor alleging that such subsidies take their toll on budget for social services. Of course, we should inform Osmeña that it is his ilk being subsidized and the “lifeline rate” subsidy for the poor are actually charged to paying customers of Meralco and all other paying power consumers.
Other oligarchs are jumping on the bandwagon of the Mindanao power crisis: For some time now, the heir of the Cojuangco political throne, Rep. Mark Cojuangco, has been promoting aggressively the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), which the Fukushima nuclear tragedy put a hold on. Now he and his group are reviving it, using the Midnanao power crisis as an opportunity.
Major national dailies have already headlined this, “Mindanao may go nuke… Region willing to host Bataan power plant or build new one” by Christine F. Herrera of the Manila Standard; but I wonder when such a consultation was ever made. It did quote one businessman and a so-called Agham party-list man Angelo Palmones, who were quick to see the money opportunity. But what they don’t seem to understand is that the BNPP uranium reaction nuke power is already “so last century.” There is now a new and 10,000 times safer nuke energy source, Thorium, which the new nuke powers, China and India, are treading.
Cojuangco reportedly wants a new plant for Mindanao which some reports peg at $10 billion, but that would just be an excuse for the Western nuke power companies to dump the perilous uranium reactor technology and uranium stockpiles on the Philippines.
One late but still welcome development in the national debate on power privatization comes from Rep. Erin Tañada who, as per this report, “Napocor privatization a mistake, says lawmaker,” wants government to return to power generation as solution to Mindanao shortage” in a report by Gil Cabacungan. But, of course, what is right for Mindanao is right for the rest of the country, and we hope more and more ordinary citizens like readers of OpinYon take up the challenge to compel our legislators to free the country from the clutches of oligarchs and demand the EPIRA to be junked, and form a new paradigm of public ownership through such means a cooperativization or consumer ownership of the power sector and distribution utilities.
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Fuel and power solutions” with Dr. Amanda Cruz and FDC; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
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