Mary Grace Padin (The Philippine
Star) - September 20, 2019 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — More oil and
gas firms are urged to join the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (PH-EITI) to promote accountability and transparency in the sector.
In its fifth country report covering
fiscal year 2017, the PH-EITI called for the Department of Energy (DOE) to
issue an administrative order similar to Administrative Order 2017-07 of the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) – which mandates mining
contractors to submit reports to the PH-EITI.
“While oil and gas sector has been
consistently well represented in the first four PH-EITI reports, we still
recommend that the DOE issue an administrative order similar to DAO 2017-07 to
further promote accountability and transparency in the sector,” the report
read.
For its fifth country report, the
PH-EITI gathered data from eight government agencies, 95 local government
units, 38 large-scale metallic mining companies, 12 large-scale non-metallic
mining firms.
Four oil and gas companies also
participated in the report.
The report also covered 63
extractive projects, 88 percent more than the 34 projects included in its
previous publication last year. It also featured a pilot report on small-scale
mining, particularly in the province South Cotabato.
Meanwhile, Finance Assistant
Secretary Maria Teresa Habitan said in a separate interview that the PH-EITI is
also seeking participation from more non-metallic mining companies.
“I think we need to improve more on
our coverage. Now we’ve achieved almost 100 percent (participation) in the
metallic (mineral sector), we’d like to see more of the non-metallic. It’s also
a large area,” Habitan said on the sidelines of the PH-EITI National Conference
2019.
She is also urging more involvement
from small-scale miners.
“The more that we’re able to get
information to them on how to do better practices of extractives or doing
mining, I think it’s all going down to the benefit of all communities and the
people,” Habitan said.
Due to increased coverage in this
year’s EITI report, the country’s extractive industry was able to report P39.1
billion in reconciled revenues in 2017, 43 percent higher than the P27.4
billion recorded in 2016.
Of this amount, P28.3 billion was
contributed by the oil and gas sector, while P7.75 billion and P3.04 billion
came from the metallic and non-metallic sector, respectively.
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