Australia's oil aims harm PhilippinesBy Gerry Albert Corpuz
Manila, Philippines — Last week officials and members of Pamalakaya, an alliance of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines, made an appeal to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to convince the Australian offshore mining company NorAsia Energy Limited to back out of conducting oil and gas exploration in the Philippines.
Specifically, the areas to be covered by the oil and gas exploration are the Cebu-Bohol Strait, a narrow strait separating the island provinces of Bohol and Cebu, and part of Leyte province that sums up the Eastern Visayan basin over an area of 7,400 square kilometers. The block lies between the two sub-blocks of Service Contract 51 where NorAsia already has an 80 percent working interest.
Moreover, the ambitious offshore mining will cover some 445,000 hectares of marine waters covering the three island provinces in the East Visayan basin. This undertaking, the fisherfolk believe, will destroy their resources. They also see it as an assault on the Filipino people’s patrimony and sovereignty.
The Filipino fisherfolk group revealed that the Otto Energy group, NorAsia’s wholly owned subsidiary company in partnership with the Philippine TransAsia Oil and Energy Development Corporation, managed to clinch Area 8 Service Contract 69 which is adjacent to Service Contract 51 for a 7-year period of oil and gas exploration.
In 2007, NorAsia acquired 146 square kilometers of 3D seismic data over two prospects in Service Contract 51. It said Area 8 of Service Contract 69 offers significant follow-up potential in additional structures if initial drilling in Service Contract 512 is successful.
NorAsia said Service Contract 69 has approximately 3,000 kilometers of existing 2D seismic and an active petroleum system as shown by the abundant onshore oil seeps and seismic supported direct hydrocarbon indicators on prospects in the area.
While Australian firms AustralAsia and Ottoman Energy groups are conducting oil and gas exploration activities in Cebu-Bohol Strait and Northeastern Leyte, another Australian company, NIDO Petroleum Ltd., is training it sights on northwest Palawan.
In its disclosure to the Australian Stock Exchange, NIDO issued 78.2 million ordinary shares to investors in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia to raise cash for the funding of its exploration activities off the coast of the island province.
David Whitby, NIDO managing director, said the company raised US$17.9 million from the issuance of 78 million ordinary shares to prospected investors. The funds would be used to finance oil exploration covered by Service Contract 54 which covers 540,000 hectares of marine waters, Service Contract 58, which covers 1.3 million hectares and Service Contract 63, which covers 1.056 million hectares, all in Northwest Palawan. The Otto Energy Ltd. group is also following the NIDO hunt for investor partners for Service Contracts 50, 52 and 55 in Northwest Palawan.
On top of these potentially rich deposits of oil and gas reserves in the Philippine sea is the socio-economic reality that the offshore mining to be conducted by NorAsia and their Filipino partner companies poses extreme danger to the Philippine marine environment, and in particular, the East Visayan Sea, which is the center of marine biodiversity in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
The Filipino fishermen support Pamalakaya’s strongly opposition to NorAsia’s offshore mining in Cebu-Bohol Strait and in the entire East Visayan basin because it will pave the way for the systematic destruction of the marine environment and the fisher people’s livelihood. The issues raised against offshore mining go beyond the context of profits and cost benefit analysis.
The far-reaching effects of oil and gas exploration, even during their exploratory or prospecting stage prior to production and extraction, are very certain, based on the country’s previous experience with other offshore mining activities staged by foreign oil and gas groups.
Studies have revealed that offshore mining causes a significant amount of air pollution. Each offshore oil platform generates approximately 214,000 pounds of air pollutants each year. An average exploration well for natural gas could generate 50 tons of nitrogen oxides, 13 tons of carbon monoxide, 6 tons of sulfur dioxide and 5 tons of volatile organic hydrocarbons.
In addition to that, oil and gas drilling operations produce huge amounts of water waste ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 metric tons of highly toxic water waste materials per drilling. The seismic tests, which are part of the exploration stage, damage the hearing organs of marine species, cause hemorrhage in body tissues, and damage their reproductive organs.
Seismic blasting can cause behavioral modifications and reduce or eliminate available habitats for breeding, spawning, foraging and migration. Seismic noises can alter fish distribution by tens of kilometers and can elicit physiological stress on neural-immune responses in marine organisms.
Seismic tests damage plankton eggs and larvae found in the immediate vicinity of airgun, and reduce catches in commercial fishers. They also damage the swim bladders of fishes and lungs of marine mammals.
Recent findings also revealed that oil and gas exploration activities could lead to massive production of other toxic waste materials such as cadmium which causes lung cancer; lead which causes gastrointestinal diseases, blood and kidney disorders, mental retardation and affects the nervous system; chromium which causes lung and liver cancers, kidney and other respiratory illnesses.
If NorAsia will push its offshore mining, a severe fish crisis will occur. It could lead to a dramatic decrease of 600,000 metric tons in the yearly production of fish in the country or approximately 20 percent annually.
The offshore mining in Cebu-Bohol Strait and other parts of the Visayan basin will affect the livelihood of not less than 100,000 small fishermen and 500,000 dependents, and will further exacerbate the problem of food security of 87 million Filipinos.
The offshore mining in the Visayan Sea will have a devastating impact on fish production in Region VI provinces that account for an average for 350,000 metric tons of fish harvest per year, and Region VII, composed of Negros Oriental, Bohol, Cebu and Siquijor, which accounts for 205,000 metric tons of fish.
Region VIII is made up of Biliran, Eastern Samar, Leyte, Northern Samar, Western Samar and Southern Leyte yield and average of 100,000 metric tons of fish per year.
Given the issues and concerns raised against NorAsia’s upcoming and full-blown offshore mining activities in Cebu-Bohol Strait and the East Visayan basin, Australian Prime Minister Rudd and his political party, the Australian Labor Party, should listen to the legitimate cry of the Filipino fishers against NorAsia’s oil and gas exploration stint in the Philippines.
The Australian government must be reminded that the Australian people will not want to be part of this looming massacre of the Philippine environment and slaughter of the fisher people’s livelihood.
Stopping NorAsia from destroying the Philippine marine resources in the name of corporate super profits may be tough, but for Prime Minister Rudd, this is the politically, morally and legally correct way to address the concern of our fisher people and the Filipino public in general
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is
www.gerryalbertcorpuz.motime.com, and he can be contacted at
[email protected]. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz.)
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