Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi asked the board of state-run PNOC Exploration Corp. to review all contracts after President Rodrigo Duterte sacked the company’s former president.
“I asked the members of the board to review, to see, to put proper direction, so at least it won’t happen again where things were hidden from me, from the board. You know, why would you have the contact signed in the presence of the president without being vetted,” Cusi, who also sits as chairman of PNOC-EC, said.
Duterte asked Pedro Aquino Jr. to resign as president and chief executive of PNOC-EC effective Oct. 14 for allegedly approving a memorandum of agreement with a Russian company to develop a multilateral cooperation in oil products and trading and joint participation in oil refining without the permission from the board or from Cusi.
Aquino served as OIC-president of parent firm Philippine National Oil Co. in 2006. He was later appointed as PNOC-EC president in 2012 and re-appointed by Duterte in January 2017.
“Nothing is happening, because that contract never existed. That contact has no effect in the country. That’s an idiotic contract, the president said. It’s 110-percent of the country’s demand. That’s the volume we are talking about,” Cusi said.
Cusi said he wanted the PNOC-EC board to review its direction and conduct a strategic planning.
“Strategic planning so they have to come up with that. It’s a corporation. Remember that PNOC is a corporation so the president cannot just do things as it if it’s his own. I cannot do it. I’m the chairman. I can’t do it. I just facilitate,” Cusi said.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian proposed a measure to restructure PNOC so that it could focus on oil and gas exploration.
“We could have prevented this situation if we had a more focused PNOC. Unfortunately, the PNOC is spreading itself too thin by doing different things when its focus should be on oil and gas exploration,” Gatchalian said.
He said PNOC-EC was supposed to be involved with exploration, but the recent deal showed its intent to go into petroleum trading. PNOC-EC owns a 10-percent stake in the Malampaya gas project in northwest Palawan.
Gatchalian said PNOC also wanted to go into liquefied natural gas while the PNOC Renewables Corp. was building solar rooftops.
“We plan to remedy this situation by championing in this Congress a measure that will restructure PNOC by abolishing its existing subsidiaries and directing its focus away from non-exploration activities. The bottom line here is that we will refocus the PNOC to purely upstream oil and gas so that it will contribute to securing the country’s energy needs,” Gatchalian said.