MANILA — Tycoon Ramon Ang on Monday urged Cabinet members and other high-ranking government officials to “protect our territory”, especially oil reserves in the West Philippine Sea to pull down power prices in the country.

Ang — whose petroleum company Petron operates in Malaysia — underscored that oil is cheaper in other Southeast Asian countries due to government subsidies on oil and power.

Malaysia can subsidize oil prices because it has its “own oil production” which produces an average of 1 million barrels a day, the business leader said during the Philippine Economic Briefing in Pasay City.

“We have a very big reserve in [the] West Philippine Sea that’s why they are very interested in the Philippines. So let us not let go of it,” Ang said.

“We should protect our territory.”

Ang made no mention of any country that has interests in the West Philippine Sea, but tensions between China and the Philippines have flared up in recent months as Beijing continues to assert ownership of nearly the entire South China Sea, despite its claim being rejected by a UN-backed court.

In 2016, an international arbitration court said that China’s 9-dash line map, which says Beijing has exclusive rights over the strategic waterway, had no legal basis.

While the Philippines has been tapping several assets to produce its own oil, Manila’s scale is far from its neighbors, Ang said.

“Our own oil production is only 6,000 barrels per day, compared to our neighboring countries’ average of 1 million barrels a day,” he said.

“If you look at it on an equal basis, our prices without the subsidy and without taxes are even lower than Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand,” he said.

“It’s also the same as power. Our power generation compared to our neighboring countries is lower, but we impose taxes on the power sector, on fuel and we also don’t give subsidies on power. That’s why our power prices are higher,” he said.

NO OIL SUBSIDY

Socioeconomic Secretary Arsenio Balisacan did not comment on Ang’s remarks on protecting the country’s interests in the West Philippine Sea, but noted that the government’s “approach is not to subsidize oil generally.”

“I think we should avoid subsidizing power, electricity, fuels generally because the biggest consumers of fuels are the rich,” Balisacan said.

“The biggest consumers of power are the rich,” he said.

Balisacan noted that the Philippines encountered “a lot of fiscal problems” when it launched the “Oil Price Stabilization Fund” (OPSF) in the past.

The said fund was created in 1984 under the administration of former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., father of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Under Presidential Decree No. 1956, the OPSF used fuel taxes to “reimburse the oil companies for cost increases on crude oil and imported petroleum products resulting from exchange rate adjustment and/or increase in world market prices of crude oil.”

Instead of a general oil subsidy, the current administration has been providing aid to “subsidize the power needs of the vulnerable sectors,” Balisacan said.

“As we implement our digitalization program, our national ID should be able to perfect the targeting… that way we can save a lot of fiscal resources and avoid potentially serious problems like a fiscal crisis,” he said.

Ang meanwhile also told business leaders and investors that the high oil and power prices in the Philippines “is not a reason for not coming” to one of Asia’s bright spot economies.

“You should come and put up your own power generating plant in your factory, which is very easy to put up,” said Ang, who has been working on a 1,000 megawatt-hour battery energy storage system (BESS).

Last year, Ang said that BESS is ready to expand its facilities “if there is a demand” for its systems.