The country’s grip on foreign direct investment (FDIs) appears to be slipping rapidly in the downstream oil sector, with industry insiders drip-feeding intel that American energy giant Chevron Corporation is already laying the groundwork for a prospective strategic exit – and that’s signaling yet another high-profile retreat from a market losing its shine.

Weekend industry talks circled around the ongoing divestment plan of the multinational energy giant, with sources cluing in that the company already kicked off its hunt for prospective buyers of its Philippine facilities.

“Chevron is selling its Philippine assets and they already started having preliminary talks with parties that may have interest to look into their terminals and other facilities in the Philippines,” a source privy to the ongoing divestment plan has revealed.

Another source tipped off that “some of the team working on the Chevron asset sale held meetings with some players in the industry – they’re gauging interest and has communicated that Chevron will take its portfolio pruning in the country.”

If Chevron pushes through with this latest divestment plan of its downstream oil facilities, that will mark its fourth major investment withdrawal from the Philippines – that was after shutting down its 49-year-old Batangas refinery in 2003; followed by the offloading of its geothermal assets in 2017; then dumping its 45 percent stake in the Malampaya gas field in 2020.

At this stage, the executives of Chevron Philippines Inc. have not confirmed the targeted unloading of the Philippine assets yet, although there were already hints to the media at its regional office in Singapore on the sale of some of its Asian facilities, primarily its planned 50 percent equity sell-down in the Singapore Refining Company.

If plans are finalized, Chevron will become the second foreign oil giant to withdraw from the Philippines this year, following French firm TotalEnergies, which solidified its exit after disposing of its assets to Filoil Energy Co. of the Villavicencio group.

When Chevron left Malampaya five years ago, it specified then that its other core operation in the Philippines is its Global Shared Services Center, or the business process outsourcing (BPO) platform that has been rendering end-to-end solutions on finance, customer service, human resources, information technology and marketing services to affiliate-companies around the world. “The asset divestment will just cover their oil terminals and other facilities, it seems they would keep their BPO operations in the country,” a source has emphasized

Chevron, originally known as Texas Company or Texaco, established its business presence in the Philippines in 1917 through a distribution deal for its products. It formally entered the domestic oil industry as a strategic player around 1936.

Prior to the deregulation of the downstream oil sector in 1998, the American company was also among the industry’s market leaders – for what was then traditionally labelled as the “Big 3” – and it shared that commanding market presence with Petron Corporation and Shell Philippines.

Given recent developments in the industry, the savage guessing game zeroes in on this: since the long-staying foreign investors are now just down to Shell and Thailand’s PTT, which of these two will eventually emerge as the last man standing? Saudi Aramco made its major comeback early this year, but it remains to be seen if its appetite will be sustained.

Before the oil giants decided on packing up, Chevron and its industry peers were already roaring with relentless disappointment over the highly politicized pricing that has been choking the oil market; and got frustrated further by the government’s failure to realistically curb fuel smuggling as well as the crippling tax burden that's not only bleeding the sector dry, but also triggering public outrage at the pumps.

Even for seasoned multinationals, they see the Philippine oil industry as a ‘big headache cauldron’ due to array of factors – there’s that tricky bureaucratic maze, unstoppable graft and corruption as well as wobbly enforcement of policies.

This week, in particular, brings some sort of déjà vu in the local oil pricing scene – as the Department of Energy (DOE) is once again seeking staggered price hikes at the domestic pumps following global price escalations precipitated by the Israel-Iran geopolitical tension.

But every time energy officials ask for phased price adjustments, that just redounds to the same smoke-and-mirrors stunt; typically, a media-friendly illusion of action that fools no one, because these so-called relief will just merely delay the bad news since the consumers would still foot the full bill in the end. And for the market, that still stirs the pot of uncertainty; keeping investors on edge and the industry stuck in a cycle of second-guessing the policymakers’ every move.

There’s no silver bullet for taming fuel prices. However, if the Philippines just played it smart and aggressive with its own oil & gas exploration and development ventures - instead of letting petroleum royalties vanish into the black hole of graft and corruption (remember the Malampaya fund scam), it might have gained some leverage to ease pricing blow at the pumps.

Yet even the country’s oil and gas investment game has driven players to the exit lane—just look at Malampaya, where original foreign stakeholders fought for a decade-long contract extension, only to be met with deafening silence from the government. But if the investor has the right political handshake, the gears of State action can actually move fast.

There’s another resonating gripe from the industry players: they claim that the government’s fuel marking policy has barely put a dent in smuggling due to ‘weak enforcement’; and that snafu is generally perceived to have been continually skewing the playing field against legit players who actually play by the rules while the smugglers are being set free from culpabilities.

So unless the government gets serious about enforcing real policies; and stops using price gimmicks like they're auditioning for a press conference’s highlight reel; foreign investors will keep ghosting the Philippine market like it’s a bad romance that is not intended for keeps.