Corporate indifference
The cavalier attitude bodes ill for its ability to meet minimum safety, health, and environmental standards when it starts operating, the petitioners added.
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Daily TribuneThe cavalier attitude bodes ill for its ability to meet minimum safety, health, and environmental standards when it starts operating, the petitioners added.
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Legal problems indeed are hounding the many businesses of conglomerate San Miguel Corp. similar to a recent research assessment of Bloomberg Intelligence.
A Bloomberg report said legal entanglement is among the serious risks another SMC unit faces.
SMC Global Power recently lost its petition for a P4.80 increase in the kilowatt-per-hour rate for the fixed-rate charges of the Sual coal and Ilijan natural gas plants after the Energy Regulatory Commission dismissed its applications.
The SMC power generating firm had notified the ERC and its principal in the power supply agreement that it will terminate the supply of electricity as it is piling up losses.
Bloomberg Intelligence was referring to repercussions of sudden termination of the contract that SMC Global Power may face penalties of more than P500 billion if it reneges on the PSAs of its units South Premiere Power Corp and SMC Energy Corp.
Similarly, its Batangas liquefied natural gas projects are saddled with alleged violations of the laws particularly on the environment.
A petition filed by the Verde Island Passage, Bukluran ng mga Mangingisda sa Batangas, Caritas Philippines, and Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development against SMC subsidiary Excellent Energy Resources Inc. and Linseed Field Corporation, a local affiliate of Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Company, sought the cancelation of the project's environmental compliance certificate before the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The petitioners and the residents of the Batangas communities where the project will be located cited the "egregious number of violations" that they said proved SMC-EERI's bad faith and inability to even meet the basic conditions of its Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan and ECC."
The cavalier attitude bodes ill for its ability to meet minimum safety, health, and environmental standards when it starts operating, the petitioners added.
On top of the fines concerned groups are asking to be imposed on EERI, the cancelation of the ECC was also sought.
The complainants said the penalty of suspension or even cancelation of the permit would be the adequate punishment on EERI "not only for its cavalier disregard for government permitting requirements but also for its failure to submit proof of its compliance with obligations that tie into its social and environmental responsibility to the community their power plant will operate in."
EERI is being charged with three major offenses over its failure to obtain the permit to cut coconut trees from the Philippine Coconut Authority, failure to obtain a water permit from the National Water Resources Board, and a Land Conversion Order from the Department of Agrarian Reform.
The complaint filed before the DENR also alleged four minor offenses for failing to submit its reportorial requirements.
AG&P-Linseed is building a liquefied natural gas import terminal facility in Batangas City, and SMC-EERI is constructing a 1.75 GW LNG power plant that will be housed in an integrated complex.
Both projects threaten the biodiversity of the Verde Island Passage and the livelihood of the people who depend on it, according to the complaint.
"SMC-EERI and AG&P-Linseed are the primary examples of His Holiness Pope Francis' warning about profits at the expense of the environment. This project will enrich their investors, who are based far away but drive our fisherfolk and those who work in the tourism industry to poverty," said Fr. Edwin Gariguez, leader of the complainants.
While it is understandable for SMC to rush the project since a series of unfortunate events left it without a source of energy for its Ilijan natural gas plant, the conglomerate should remain a good corporate citizen by ensuring the safety and health of communities in its project site.
