PNOC-EC plans to go into retail gas venture

It appears that the league of existing industry oil players will be on head-on collision with state-run Philippine National Oil Company-Exploration Corporation (PNOC-EC) which is planning to venture into retail gasoline stations to exercise pricing control in the industry. PNOC-EC chairman Jacinto V. Paras said their initial plan is to engage in finished products importation for their retail stations, while they study eventual prospects of putting up a refinery or stockpiling facility. He said having a national oil company (NOC) will enable the government to influence market pricing; anchoring such assumptions on what he claims as what the government had been doing when Petron Corporation was still partly-owned by its mother unit PNOC. “The government should retain a national oil company. In the past, it (government) was using Petron to control oil prices,” Paras said.If the PNOC-EC chairman’s statement is to be believed, that stopped short of confirming industry talks then that Petron was indeed under the “government’s thumb.” Paras though indicated the main question now is where to source project funding, given the dire financial strait of government; and with so many projects of PNOC-EC still hanging in the air. When asked about major triggering factor why PNOC-EC thought of investing in the downstream oil industry, Paras appeared contradicting himself when he said that oil as a business could be a profitable undertaking. (June 29, 2009)