Oil, gas firms urged to join Philippine transparency initiative

MANILA, Philippines — More oil and gas firms are urged to join the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI) to promote accountability and transparency in the sector.

In its fifth country report covering fiscal year 2017, the PH-EITI called for the Department of Energy (DOE) to issue an administrative order similar to Administrative Order 2017-07 of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) – which mandates mining contractors to submit reports to the PH-EITI.

“While oil and gas sector has been consistently well represented in the first four PH-EITI reports, we still recommend that the DOE issue an administrative order similar to DAO 2017-07 to further promote accountability and transparency in the sector,” the report read.

For its fifth country report, the PH-EITI gathered data from eight government agencies, 95 local government units, 38 large-scale metallic mining companies, 12 large-scale non-metallic mining firms.

Four oil and gas companies also participated in the report. 

The report also covered 63 extractive projects, 88 percent more than the 34 projects included in its previous publication last year. It also featured a pilot report on small-scale mining, particularly in the province South Cotabato.

Meanwhile, Finance Assistant Secretary Maria Teresa Habitan said in a separate interview that the PH-EITI is also seeking participation from more non-metallic mining companies.

“I think we need to improve more on our coverage. Now we’ve achieved almost 100 percent (participation) in the metallic (mineral sector), we’d like to see more of the non-metallic. It’s also a large area,” Habitan said on the sidelines of the PH-EITI National Conference 2019.

She is also urging more involvement from small-scale miners.

“The more that we’re able to get information to them on how to do better practices of extractives or doing mining, I think it’s all going down to the benefit of all communities and the people,” Habitan said.

Due to increased coverage in this year’s EITI report, the country’s extractive industry was able to report P39.1 billion in reconciled revenues in 2017, 43 percent higher than the P27.4 billion recorded in 2016.

Of this amount, P28.3 billion was contributed by the oil and gas sector, while P7.75 billion and P3.04 billion came from the metallic and non-metallic sector, respectively.