Are we ready?

We wish President GMA well now that she is finally on her way to Riyadh. This was a journey that had been planned since last year. As the amiable Saudi Ambassador Wali told this column they had already worked out the details last year when a presidential trip was first planned but politics came in the way and the trip had to be cancelled. Well, we still have turbulent politics today but the scare is gone and thankfully comfortable enough for her to leave and fulfill her promise to visit the Saudis.

For political analysts, her stopover in Macau to attend the Carissa Cruz wedding should be more interesting. It seals the closeness between the President and Speaker JDV, the two officials who will loom large if and when Charter change shifts the country from presidential to parliamentary federal form of government. Carissa is JDV’s stepdaughter but he has so successfully merged his and Gina’s children from previous marriages she is very fond of him. This relationship has become even more poignant when the Speaker lost his only daughter KC in a tragic fire and her last contact minutes before she died was Carissa to whom she sent a text asking for help. In the Philippines personal ties can be crucial in forging political partnerships.

I wish her publicists would stop saying that she will put forward the question of a ready supply and affordable price of oil to the Saudis. That just shows how ignorant we are. Those who trumpet that line may embarrass her only if they think that getting cheap oil is a matter of visiting King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, known widely among Muslims as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

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The oil crisis has been kicked around for sometime now. We had a brush with it earlier when oil producing countries tried to use oil as a political weapon in the early ’70s. The present crisis is different. It came to a head sometime in October 2002 when Colin Campbell, arguably the world’s foremost expert on oil and the oil business, shocked a select group of bankers that the oil crisis was more serious than it has been made out to be.

His analysis was interesting: "Don’t worry about oil running out; it won’t for very many years. The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he told them. We may be looking at the wrong end of the stick when we talk about how much oil and at what price we can get it in the market. It isn’t the oil but how the world economy works around oil that matters. That will affect our lives profoundly if we do not do something about our oil dependency now.

For you and me that is relevant. It is not political tattle tale because everything about the way we live can change overnight. First everything will cost more – travel, electric bills, agriculture, trade, anything made of plastic, name it. Second and more frightening, the danger of war – global war and depression – will be upon us as powerful countries scramble to control oil resources. The war in Iraq, the rapid economic rise of China, global warming and recent record oil prices are all signs that point to cataclysmic events. Those who are knowledgeable about the oil crisis are saying the debate has shifted from "if" there is a global peak to "when".

USGS geologist Les Magoon, the Oil and Gas Journal, and others say the peak will occur between 2003 and 2020. We are now in 2006. None extend beyond the year 2020 which means the shortfalls may come sooner than expected. Still, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept the mounting "supply" problem. When this demand is reached it will happen so quickly, as one expert put it, the world will start to come apart at the seams almost overnight.

That is why world powers are positioning themselves for war. The war will be about who can take the most oil. The initial oil shortage, when it does come, will certainly be a serious inconvenience to most of us, but this will be nothing compared to what can happen after when the scramble for oil begins. It will be about events beyond our control.

Now that is worrying. If experts claim that time is short, why are world leaders playing blind, not even admitting the gravity of the problem? Either governments are too busy with other concerns or they are being overoptimistic. One expert predicts the oil peak will be reached as early as in 2008. If that is the case then we should start planning today. If that is how close we are to peak oil then the question to ask is what do we do? Are we ready for it?

In the event, I think Filipinos may have a better chance to survive than most if such an oil crisis does happen. But we have to get it right. Visiting King Saud is good diplomacy but we will need willful leadership that can help us re-haul our life style: bicycles instead of cars, solar energy for electricity, more covered sidewalks, town planning aimed on self sufficient neighborhoods and mass transport for longer distances, among other things.

The opening of the first and largest coco-biodiesel plant in Asia is timely. It is in the right direction to wean us from oil dependence which is what we should be about instead of looking for cheaper oil. The coco-biodiesel marketed under the brand name BioActiv will give a P1,000 savings on fuel consumption and vehicle maintenance per month. By adding one liter of BioActiv fuel enhancer to every 100 liters of diesel we reduce the transportation cost per kilometer. If it is any consolation, it does not even matter how rich you are. There will be no running to richer countries because the richer the country the hard it will be hit by the changes in lifestyle that the oil crisis will bring.

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That is how grave the problems are on a world scale. But here we are in the Philippines with headlines on the pathetic subject that Leandro Aragoncillo a former US Marine who worked once in the White House and the FBI has admitted passing classified information for five years to the Opposition. He named former President Erap and Sen. Panfilo ‘Ping Lacson, and Rep. Arnulfo Fuentebella as among those who received classified information from him. There were others. Among the classified information Aragoncillo passed to his Filipino contacts were sensitive materials relating to terrorist threats to US government interests in the Philippines and the joint military exercises involving American troops in the country.

Now will the Senate or the House consider an investigation in aid of legislation in order for so grave a matter? Surely this is a matter to investigate. How did it happen that a former president, a senator and a congressman of the land should end up as unindicted conspirators in American courts because of their efforts to oust President GMA? Let us see what Congress does in the face of such a blot on our country.

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