An oil find off Palawan

The recent oil find off Palawan will not bring down fuel prices anytime soon, but it's still a welcome development in a country reeling from a string of bad news. Officials of Shell Philippines Exploration reported to President Estrada last week that the company has found 200 million barrels of light crude oil in the Malampaya area where SPEX is drilling for natural gas. Of the 200 million barrels, up to 30 million can be recovered, SPEX officials announced. If fully developed, the oil find can yield an initial 20,000 to 25,000 barrels of crude oil daily by next year and up to 50,000 barrels by 2003 -- an amount equivalent to about 15 percent of the country's total crude imports last year, President Estrada said.

The celebrations can wait until SPEX announces that the oil find is commercially viable. Still, the find has been greeted with some relief in a nation that is dependent on imports for its crude oil needs. The year-long effort of petroleum-exporting countries to push up world crude prices to $35 per barrel -- an effort that eased only last month -- showed once again how difficult life can be in a country that does not produce its own crude oil. The Malampaya oil find raises hopes that the country's dependence on crude imports may be minimized.

Equally welcome is the news that the $4.5-billion Malampaya project, which is being developed by SPEX together with Texas Oil Co. and the Philippine National Oil Co., is expected to start providing natural gas to power plants by October 2001. Natural gas is not only cleaner but cheaper than petroleum, and extensive use of the fuel can bring down power rates. By 2002, gas-fired power plants will be providing up to 30 percent of Luzon's power requirements, company officials said.

Apart from trying to extract crude oil from the South China Sea, the government's main thrust should be the development of alternative types of fuel. The recent effort by oil-producing countries to raise world crude prices by cutting oil output has been done before, and they will do it again. Non-oil producing countries are rushing to develop other sources of energy. Industrialized countries are experimenting with products that run on other types of energy such as solar power. The Philippines must join the international effort to escape the oil exporters' grip.