The United States Embassy in Manila on Thursday, Jan. 11, confirmed the current presence of a US commercial tanker in the Philippines, which Senator Imee Marcos believed to be transferring 39 million gallons of fuel from a US military facility to the country.
"We can confirm that the Yosemite Trader, a commercial tanker, is currently in the vicinity of Subic Bay, Philippines in order to transfer clean fuel from the U.S. military facility at Red Hill, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to a commercial storage facility at Subic Bay," Kanishka Gangopadhyay, the embassy's spokesman, said in a statement.
Gangopadhyay's confirmation came after Marcos, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, raised suspicion about the presence of the tanker, saying it might be a pre-positioning of the US' military supplies in the country in case of a war.
Citing several international shipping trackers, Marcos said the tanker arrived in the Philippines on Jan. 9 and has since remained in its position 50 kilometers west of Subic Bay.
But Gangopadhyay clarified that the tanker's activity was only "one of multiple shipments of safe, clean fuel from the Red Hill facility to other locations in the Pacific."
Meanwhile, he also has yet to confirm if the tanker would facilitate the transfer of a total of 39 million gallons of fuel from the US.
"All arrangements for the transfer and storage of this fuel were made through the proper channels, using established logistics contracts with Philippine commercial entities," he added.