Walk your talk, Mr. Big Shot

Among the most visible of the tycoons, this smug fella has perfected the art of the sympathetic billionaire.

As the head of one of the country’s, and the region’s, biggest conglomerates, he steps before the cameras amid the Middle East conflict’s oil shock and solemnly declares, “We will not take advantage of this fuel crisis.”

The oil company he controls, he assures Filipinos, will keep margins “normal” or even lower them.

He even offers to sell the company back to the government “if they think they can run it better.”

The optics made him appear noble and patriotic, but the ledger tells a different story, one of calculated greed dressed up as restraint.

The government should call his bluff to sell, as the oil company has racked up record profits even as global prices swung wildly.

In 2025 alone, its net income jumped 84 percent to P15.6 billion while the conglomerate’s power arm quietly pursued and won regulatory approval for over P29 billion in “cost recoveries” from electricity users.

That’s 28 centavos per kilowatt-hour extra slapped onto household and business bills for years, money extracted for “changes in circumstances” tied to the very fuel volatility that the heavyweight oligarch now claims to be partly absorbed by the oil firm.

The Gulf crisis became another profit center. The conglomerate’s units refine and sell the fuel that powers its own plants, then pass the volatility costs downstream to distributors and, ultimately, to consumers.

When global prices spiked, fuel companies implemented consecutive hikes that hammered transport workers, farmers and fisherfolk.

When prices eased even slightly, the reductions were token. The vow to the public not to “earn more than usual” collides head-on with the reality that the market dominance of the refiner of nearly 30 percent of petroleum demand lets it dictate the pace of relief. At the same time, its power subsidiaries lock in billions in Energy Regulatory Commission-approved surcharges.

The magnate preaches shared sacrifice while the power plants he controls terminate power supply agreements, citing force majeure due to fuel spikes, only to reevaluate and demand full recovery of those “unforeseen” costs, which went beyond what was provided for in the contracts they entered into.

The ERC, ever obliging, green-lighted the windfall, making Filipinos pay twice, once at the pump with grudging price relief, again at the meter with higher generation charges.

All while the conglomerate posts robust earnings and expands its grip on infrastructure, airports and energy.

The offer to sell is the ultimate deflection, dangling nationalization as a patriotic gesture while knowing full well the political and operational hurdles make it theater.

The organization’s muscle now squeezes power distributors and consumers alike.

It is the jeepney driver whose daily fuel needs now devour his earnings, and the struggling households and businesses, watching power rates climb yet again, who absorb the pain while the conglomerate rakes in the opportunistic profit bump.

The household chooses between lights and lunch while the conglomerate games the system to prioritize shareholder returns, regulatory wins, and PR optics over genuine relief.

The big shot’s mask of mercy has slipped as Filipinos see the gap between his soothing assurances and the billions of pesos funneled through the system his conglomerate dominates.

Enough with the statesman pose. If the conglomerate truly cares about the nation’s burdens, it should slash pump prices deeper and faster and absorb more of the electricity bill’s volatility instead of passing it through with interest.

The quarterly report, not public welfare, remains the true north of the pretentious billionaire and his powerful conglomerate.

The rest is just expensive showboating.