Senator Sherwin Gatchalian proposed the restructuring of state-run Philippine National Oil Co. into a pure oil and gas exploration firm.
“We’re working on restructuring PNOC and to sharpen its mandate to purely oil and gas exploration. We’re working on that. This is a model we saw in Japan,” Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate energy committee, said.
“We will remove the trading. [There will be] no more RC [PNOC-Renewables Corp.] and EC [PNOC Exploration Corp.] No more jatropha, no more property [development]. Just oil and gas,” he said.
Gatchalian said there was a time that PNOC Alternative Fuels Corp. invested in jatropha amounting to P2.4 billion.
“Let’s just concentrate on oil and gas discovery because that is mandated. They should look for, explore in the upstream,” he said.
He said PNOC’s name might be retained, but the government would streamline its mandate.
“We will retain. We will tighten the power of Congress over this new entity that we’re thinking. But the bottom line here is we will refocus it to purely upstream oil and gas so that we will be secure in our energy needs. Because if you go jatropha and other things, money is wasted,” he said.