Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers (Ellson Quismorio/ MANILA BULLETIN)

Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers has expressed reservations on the reported plan to set up a naval facility inside the Phividec Industrial Authority (PIA) business complex in Misamis Oriental. 

This plan was in connection with the expansion of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) between the Philippines and the United States (US).

The 3,000-hectare Phividec estate, which houses some 200 existing business locators and spans across Tagoloan and Villanueva towns, is an economic zone registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority.

“While I do not question the logic and wisdom behind the plan to put up an EDCA naval site inside the Phividec facility, I think it would be prudent for us not to inter-mix the business complex with a military complex,” Barbers said in a statement Thursday, Jan. 2.

The EDCA site inside the Phividec industrial complex would supposedly allow the upcoming naval facility to complement the Lumbia airbase’s logistics function, both for military and civil defense purposes. 

The Phividec lies about 30 kilometers from the Lumbia air base in Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental.

Meanwhile, Barbers, overall chairman of the House quad-committee (quad-comm) renewed his call for the establishment of a naval facility in Surigao del Norte to protect the country’s eastern seaboard from smugglers and foreign intruders.

Barbers and his brother, Surigao del Norte Governor Lyndon Barbers, have long been offering the province as a possible EDCA naval site to protect the country’s eastern seaboard from foreign intruders allegedly eyeing deuterium and other minerals extraction in the region. 

With the recovery by local fishermen of a Chinese military owned underwater drone off the waters in San Pascual, Masbate last Monday, the veteran congressman said it was not farfetched that China has long been conducting in-depth intel gathering within Philippine waters, possibly including data on deuterium. 

Deuterium is widely used in prototype fusion reactors and has their application in military, industrial and scientific fields. In nuclear fusion reactors, it is used as a tracer and it is responsible for slowing down neutrons in heavy water moderated fission reactors.

“With the growing global race to find renewal sources of fuel or energy like deuterium, which reportedly is found abundant in the deep seas in the country’s eastern seaboard, it is not farfetched that China also wanted to get a hand on it,” Barbers said.