DOE acts to avert fuel shortage

The Philippine Department of Energy (DOE) has asked the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to exempt oil tankers from the number coding scheme and truck ban to prevent a possible fuel shortage in the metropolis, with the closure of the country’s biggest commercial pipeline in Makati City. MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino said that Energy Undersecretary Glorietta Ison made a verbal request for oil tankers to be exempted from the city’s traffic reduction scheme, to be able to transport fuel products to Metro Manila continuously. An oil products pipeline owned by the First Philippine Industrial Corp., which transports around 60% of Manila’s fuel needs from Batangas province to the Pandacan oil depots in Manila, was found to be the source of a leak in a residential condominium in Makati, and has since been shut down. Tolentino said he was told that at the moment, there was an ample supply of petroleum products in the metropolis. (October 31, 2010)