Senator Alan Peter Cayetano renewed his pitch for the proposed Philippine Natural Gas Development Act—a measure that is crucial for the country’s goal of achieving long-term energy security.
Earlier, his sister, Sen. Pia Cayetano, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Energy, sponsored Senate Bill No. 2793 or the bill that promotes the country’s shift towards cleaner energy sources and supporting the development of indigenous natural gas.
“Let’s make the Philippine Natural Gas Development Act the best bill possible to expedite our nation's direction towards achieving energy security," Cayetano said during his interpellation on the bill.
He said he fully support Senator Pia’s call for harnessing local natural resources, noting the country’s difficulty in securing energy supplies, particularly in light of recent global crises.
“Each time there is war or like what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are very vulnerable, not only in terms of supply chain of products but also energy, precisely because we have to import oil, coal and natural gas,” he pointed out.
Developing the country’s own indigenous natural gas will mitigate the reliance on imported liquefied natural gas which are highly volatile in terms of pricing, the senator said.
“That’s now what we are trying to find out, how we can have a much better supply of natural gas,” he said.
But the government needs to execute a prompt and decisive action because developing the country’s own natural gas sources is a long-term process.
“I cannot really predict what’s going to happen in three years but unless there is technology that makes wind and solar sources capable of powering the whole country 24/7 and unless our national grid natin has better capability, I would assume that putting up a power plant would take the usual three to five years, and setting up a well for natural gas could take three to seven years,” he said.
“That’s how urgent this bill is…As technologies for solar and wind energy are still being developed, I believe this bill points us in the right direction for the transition,” he stressed.