The warning signs are no longer subtle. On Thursday, 26 March, representatives of domestic petroleum companies told a Senate committee hearing that fuel importation after April is not assured, contrary to government assurances that importations were coming to replenish the country’s 45-day inventory.
Philippine Institute for Petroleum executive director Rafael Capinpin said PIP members — which include Shell Pilipinas Corp., Petron Corp., Chevron Philippines, PTT Corp., and Isla LPG Corp. — “have been working very hard to secure supply, but many of the traders are keeping quiet, especially for May deliveries; there has been no responses for tenders for May.”
Independent Philippine Petroleum Companies Association president, Tanya Samillano, said, “Our members (Seaoil, Unioil, Flying V, other smaller players) confirmed to the DoE that importations are still arriving but we haven’t received confirmation of future deliveries beyond April.”
Petron Corporation general manager Lubin Nepomuceno said buying crude oil has been difficult because exporting countries like China, Singapore, and Thailand have temporarily imposed bans on selling fuel to countries.
Chevron Philippines general manager Pongtorn Tangmanuswong said their inventory will last only until the end of April, but that is based on normal demand. He said they’re “finalizing” May shipments but these have not been confirmed.
Oil refineries are still running on the inventories before Iran was attacked — “inventories normally lasting 40-60 days” — but these refineries are now running under reduced production levels. Tangmanuswong said the impact of the tight fuel supply will really be felt hard by importing countries by the end of April, starting in May.
Meanwhile, monitoring by the Philippine National Police showed that over 400 gas stations out of 14,269 nationwide have temporarily closed due to low supplies.
With gas stations closing, fuel tenders for May going unanswered, and exporting nations from China to Singapore slamming their doors shut, the Philippines is staring at one of the most consequential supply crises in its history.
How bad could things get? The immediate short answer: very bad. The Philippines imports nearly all of its petroleum requirements, making it acutely vulnerable to global supply shocks.
If importations beyond April fail, the consequences would be swift and merciless. A fuel shortage would cripple logistics and transport, and drive food prices skyward in an archipelago where inter-island shipping is the lifeblood of commerce.
The Marcos administration must immediately shift from reassurance mode to crisis footing, maybe even consider activating emergency fuel rationing protocols, without delay. Priority supply chains must be designated for agriculture, health, emergency services, and public transport. Strategic reserve drawdowns should be pre-authorized so bureaucratic delays do not cost lives when the crunch comes.
Likewise, the Philippines should urgently dispatch high-level envoys to Mideast oil producers — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar — as well as to the US, which has been ramping up its own LNG and crude exports. Bilateral emergency supply agreements, even at premium prices, are far preferable to the dreaded alternative of no oil.
It is good that the President has finally accepted the fact that the situation warrants declaring the country under a State of National Energy Emergency.
Amid all this lies a compelling conundrum. The Philippines sits atop potentially enormous hydrocarbon reserves in the West Philippine Sea, including at Reed Bank (Recto Bank), well within its Exclusive Economic Zone under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Activating exploration is legally the country’s sovereign right. The government should push forward with whatever international partners who respect that sovereignty. That would leave out China. Partnering with China — something the Chinese have long wanted on an exclusive basis — and accepting terms that would grant Beijing a majority share of the resources extracted from our territorial waters — would be a Faustian bargain of historic proportions.
It would legitimize China’s illegal claims, set a dangerous precedent for every other disputed maritime zone on earth, and surrender future generations’ patrimony for a short-term fix. A nation that mortgages its sovereign territory to solve a supply crisis it failed to anticipate is not solving a problem — it is creating a far graver one.
We could strike a fairer deal with better partners. American, European, and South Korean energy firms have both capital and the technology sans territorial ambitions.
This crisis was not entirely unforeseeable. For decades, successive Philippine governments treated energy security as someone else’s problem, leaving importation largely to private actors with no obligation to the national interest beyond the profit motive.
That era must end. The country that cannot fuel its own economy cannot defend its people, feed its families, or assert its sovereignty. The fuel gauges are pointing dangerously low. The time to act — with urgency, with clarity, and without illusions — is right now.