PHILIPPINE WATERS, RIVERS, lakes and tributaries, or bays, surrounding shoals and sandbars, or farther off within the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone, have all been threatened by powerful polluters. They vary from Filipino corporations to insidious agents of superpower hegemons determined on destroying the Philippines.
Ironically, the first line of defense has been fishermen.
Off the province of Batangas, in pristine straits, a sacred home to rare, biodiverse albeit fragile marine life that provide livelihood for the humblest in Philippine society, big bad money, dirty energy and a powerful oligarchy has lost a war against a small community of fishermen.
Vilified as “Dirty Energy” characterized as peddlers of deadly fossil fuels, bankrolled by excessive profiteering from imposed baseload electricity where rates are among the highest in the region, their instances of defeat are not only rare but inspiring.
A beacon of hope has been lit. And none too soon.
In the northern mountains, indigenous tribes whose food sources were from self-tilled farms and an unspoiled river of freshwater fish are being driven off their land to make way for a “Dirty Energy” power plant. The plant’s primary markets are in urban areas. Its direct beneficiaries, fat pocketbooks in Manila.
Along the Western coast of Luzon, while peacefully protesting against the stockpiles of a “Dirty Energy” power plant amidst a community of farmers and fisherfolk, a housewife was brutally killed in front of her grandchildren.
Facing the Pacific, a fossil-fired “Dirty Energy” plant forced the displacement of fisherfolk far upland away from their sources of livelihood while coastal infrastructure caused extensive fishkills, the mass destruction of thousands of coconut trees, plus the mysterious deaths of Carabao populations attributed to brain damage (“na-ulol”) – a haunting specter of mercury poisoning in effluents and waste discharges.
Worsening the travesty, the plants off-taker is a distribution franchise whose affiliated upstream investments include even more toxic “Dirty Energy.”
The term “oligarchy” has attained negativity where quiet lives are brutally torn apart by “Dirty Energy.” Fortunately, there are instances when even the most powerful serpents are slain by ordinary folk.
The inspiring victory over one of the most destructive forms of “Dirty Energy” off the Batangas coast encapsulates the foulest of fossil-based liquid natural gas (LNG).
Those evils include LNG storage whether floating or along coastal mangroves and communities; its habitat damage, thermal pollution and its fatal degasification processes, where deadly methane discharges and flare ups, poisonous effluents and waste threaten explosions, catastrophic fires, and widespread conflagration.
Derived from The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, applying specific LNG threats to fishermen to the reality of the Batangas LNG facility, discerns why the fishermen were so compelled into heroism.
One, “Dirty Energy” LNG infrastructure deprives fishermen access to fishing grounds if not directly causing the loss of fishing sanctuaries.
Two, “Dirty Energy” LNG operations destroy seabed habitats that serve as homes and fish nurseries. Even the mechanical vibration, the noise pollution and other jarring industrial disturbances result in significant losses and consequently, livelihood for fishing communities.
Three, beyond the methane flare ups and the poisonous discharges into fishing waters of LNG storage facilities, its regasification operations create thermal pollution and temperature imbalances resulting in virtual marine life genocide.
Four, “Dirty Energy” LNG infrastructure introduces into living environments pollutants and toxic chemicals including those in pipelines, transport and transfer facilities where each contaminate not simply external habitats but also the internal organs of fish rendering whole catches poisonous for consumption.
Five, Batangas-based “Dirty Energy” LNG facilities are located in a high-hazard, high-risk zone that experiences at least twenty percent or one to two yearly cyclones. This catalyzes the risks of each of the foregoing threats and raises the probability of a cataclysmic event not just once but twice a year.
Upon abandoning its Plan-A floating storage and regasification plant, but hellbent on pursuing a business model that inflicts genocide on fisherfolk communities, its land-based Plan B simply expands threats inland, introducing a whole new set of toxicities that create extraneous pricing distortions.
For one, employing its Plan B by purchasing coastline property virtually on the eve of its scheduled start-up, the reanimated LNG facility carries sunk and stranded costs from its initial floating storage and regasification CAPEX. Recouping these unjustly inflated rates charged to electricity consumers.
Relative to multi-revenue LNG investors, the corporate structure of a small me-too player lacks cost compensating distribution utility (DU) and renewable energy (RE) revenues where rates yield to periodic least-cost regulatory oversight.
For economies of scale, a me-too LNG operator must seek a shotgun marriage with bigger LNG investors. Unfortunately, a belated patch-work Bride of Frankenstein comes with unattractive pre-operating baggage.
Where the Malampaya deepwater gas field operator is strategically the official gas and LNG aggregator, as an intermittent supply gap filler, me-too LNG opportunists are subject to dispatch protocols. Their pre-operating over-hang makes them expensive. Thus, weakest link me-too LNG operators are unlikely to be dispatched ahead of more cost-efficient LNG suppliers.
This is significant where the Malampaya operator is the official aggregator. Malampaya’s cost upsides dwarf LNG demand economics. In other words, LNG dispatch is a function of Malampaya productivity. With its recent discovery of additional gas reserves, given the extended period of internal rates of return (IRR) of LNG importers and re-gasifiers needed to recoup costs, a pre-burdened, end-of-the-line me-too LNG operator will likely be plagued with heavy stranded costs.
From an energy policy perspective, LNG was peddled as a bridge fuel while energy sources transitioned to RE. Thus, IRR horizons cannot extend beyond the span a bridge fuel such as LNG crosses.
Caveat creditor. Pollution pariahs pose high-risk uncertainties given double-whammy stranded costs, running losses plus the downsides of a me-too player absent compensating RE or DU revenues. Lenders have a caveatable interest on property since they bear the risk of a debtor’s default.
Indeed, the community of Batangas fishermen may have fatally slain Goliath.
