The Manila government’s policy of secrecy was assailed last week with the exposure of an ASEAN gas pipeline agreement that was kept secret by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo over the last six years.

The fisherfolk alliance Pamalakaya insisted the Memorandum of Understanding on the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline which the Philippine government signed with Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam on July 5, 2002 in Bali, Indonesia was a treaty that needs the approval of two-thirds of the present 23 Philippine senators, but the ASEAN pact was hidden from the approving authority and slipped the scrutiny of the Filipino public.

Pamalakaya national chairperson Fernando Hicap insisted that Article 8, section 2 of the MOU clearly stipulates that the memorandum of understanding is subject to ratification or acceptance by all the member countries, and that the instrument of ratification or acceptance shall be deposited with the secretary general of ASEAN who shall promptly inform each member country of such deposit.

The fisherfolk leader argued senators of the Philippine Republic should have been notified and advised that such an MOU on the gas pipeline agreement existed. He said it needs the concurrence of the Senate because the nature of the agreement is a regional treaty subject to ratification. But Arroyo and company intentionally kept this away from the scrutiny and approving authority of the Senate for undisclosed reasons.

In the agreement, the Philippine government is compelled to allow the construction of an ambitious gas pipeline from Palawan to East Natuna, Sabah, Malaysia. Pamalakaya said the gas pipeline would line the Philippines through Palawan and Malaysia through East Natuna.

Pamalakaya said the Palawan-Malaysia gas pipeline project will go as far as 1,540 kilometers, with the gas pipeline measuring 42 inches in diameter. The cost of the gas line project between the Philippines and Malaysia would amount to over US$3 billion. The project would start this year and would be completed in 2015.

The fisherfolk federation said other pipelines to be constructed are a Malaysia-Thailand gas pipeline, an Indonesia-Singapore gas pipeline and a Myanmar-Thailand gas pipeline. Hicap said Singapore is also eying its own gas pipeline that would connect the Philippines through the Camago in Palawan.

Since it signing six years ago, the Manila government did not mention anything about the ambitious gas pipeline project. Pamalakaya, which exposed the deal, said from the day the pipeline pact was signed up to the present, the Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline pact remained a national confidential project on the part of President Arroyo and her top officials. The Filipino people were kept uninformed and the Senate, the ratifying authority, has not been advised that such a monumental project exists, with serious implications to the nation’s sovereignty and patrimony.

“If there’s nothing wrong about this project, why would President Arroyo keep this project like a big, big secret? We smell something fishy here, as fishy as the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking,” Pamalakaya said in reference to the stalled Spratly offshore mining deal among China, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The MOU, which is consistent with the vision of the ASEAN countries to promote energy cooperation in the region, was first tackled on June 24, 1986 in Manila when members of ASEAN forged an agreement on energy cooperation, followed by the ASEAN Energy Cooperation in Bangkok on Dec. 15, 1995.

The TAGP is a specific energy program approved in Hanoi, Vietnam and was endorsed by ASEAN heads of state Dec. 16, 1998. On July 3, 1999, the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation from 1999-2004 was approved, and it entrusted the responsibility of implementing the TAGP to the ASEAN council on Petroleum. In 2002, the final MOU on gas pipeline projects across ASEAN was signed by its member states.

The objective of the gas pipeline project is to provide a broad framework for ASEAN member countries to cooperate toward the realization of the TAGP project to help ensure greater regional energy security.

The MOU for gas pipeline projects task all member countries to establish cooperation in various aspects such as individual and joint studies, and to support or encourage the production, utilization, distribution, marketing and sale of natural gas among ASEAN member nations.

Critics and experts in the conduct of regional politics in the region said ASEAN nations have virtually opened the floodgates for economic plunder by big gas and oil monopolies when they signed the pipeline agreement and announced that funding would be secured from the private sector that has the means and technology to explore and extract the rich gas resources still abundant in the Southeast Asian region.

They said the Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline pact is a sellout, assuming that this corporate prey was probably used by the Philippine government to sign 64 service contracts with different oil exploration corporations, including its own territories like Palawan, which is incidentally the object of the Palawan-Malaysia gas pipeline project.

The agreement also recognizes the role to be played by the private sector in developing gas pipelines, including its financing and construction, and the supply, transportation and distribution of natural gas to member countries. The TAGP promotes the open access principle including management of pipelines according to internationally accepted rules as set by established oil and gas industries all over the world.

The MoU on TAGP also encourages exemption of export and import tax duties, lower or free transit fee, tax duties or other taxes imposed by the government, including charges on construction, operation and maintenance of pipelines as well as the natural gas in transit.

The Filipino people cannot be blamed if they oppose the Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline deal. For them it is nothing but a pipe dream and a grand betrayal of the collective interest and national sentiment of 90 million Filipinos courtesy of the Manila government’s running policy of secrecy and penchant shady deals.

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