‘Welcome to the club, Petron’

FUELING up at Petron Clark

One cannot help but feel a little sorry for large corporations that, every now and then, fall prey to enterprising individuals who lodge complaints with authorities alleging some environmental or health law violation and leveraging off populist sentiment.

Mining firms and industrial-agricultural companies know this phenomenon well and have become adept at responding to agitated local communities or local government officials.

The latest to join the club is Petron Corp.

The country’s biggest petroleum refiner and distributor has recently become the subject of news reports and complaints from local government officials and a number of Limay residents linking its Bataan refinery to everything from an oil leak, to rashes on residents’ skin and a slew of other would-be environmental or health issues.

And in the midst of all this, Biz Buzz learned that a representative of Limay Mayor Lilvir Roque actually called on Ramon Ang, who heads Petron’s parent firm San Miguel Corp., a day before the complaints against the company hit mainstream media.

In any case, on the day the news broke (sending Petron’s share price plummeting), company officials met with their counterparts in Limay (in a so-called Multipartite Monitoring Team) to review the complaints being lodged by local residents, some of whom were complaining that the ash byproducts of the refinery were causing them to have skin rashes.

The result of the meeting was reported back to authorities in Manila, through the following SMS message: “PG-Enro (meaning the “Provincial Government Environment and Natural Resources official) confirmed that the complainants who were interviewed on TV were the informal settlers who were NOT residents of Lamao or Alangan. The reported skin rashes were verified to be scabies and ‘higad’ bites.

Of course, scabies is an infectious skin disease caused by the bite of a particular mite (Sarcoptes scarbei, if you must know). “Higad,” meanwhile, refers to a rash- and itch-inducing caterpillar. These had nothing to do with Petron’s ash byproducts… which happened to be deposited on the same company property that, by the way, some of the informal settlers were occupying.

Even law-abiding firms are no match for LGU officials and their constituents sometimes. Said one exasperated mining industry official: “Welcome to the club, Petron.” —DAXIM L. LUCAS