Filipinos deserve competent and well-experienced hands on the country’s energy wheel; and not a Department of Energy (DOE) that reacts faster with alarm than with analysis, especially when Energy Secretary Sharon Garin slipped into an “alarmist trap” by prematurely floating that socially sensitive diesel prices could reach that ₱200-per-liter scare—a scenario that only aggravated public anxiety instead of the government easing tensions through measured and data-driven assessments.

That April 8 Congressional hearing statement from the Energy Secretary came across as uninformed guidance and a poorly timed blunder, because even as it was being delivered, global markets were already reacting to news of a United States (US)-Iran ceasefire that drove oil prices down—a clear signal that any seasoned energy official would have recognized as easing pressure on prices, not escalating alarm.

As if on cue, just days later, news of price rollbacks began dominating headlines; hence, swinging that dramatic ₱200-per-liter speculation from the Secretary into a less credible forecast and more of a self-inflicted fear trigger that should never have been blurted out in the first place. After all, the Energy Secretary is supposed to steady public expectations, not amplify uncertainty at the microphone.

Past the edges of the Secretary’s price-scare theatrics, the Energy department’s thin narrative on a true “whole supply chain solutions approach” stands out just as sharply, because outside Imperial Manila’s domain, consumers aren’t just crunching projections or reading forecasts; many are already struggling to secure fuel and even driving miles across towns because the empty pumps already tell a louder and harsher truth than any press releases from the DOE head office ever could.

From what the public can see, the DOE appears less like a crisis manager and more like a rolling commentary desk, as the Secretary is occupied parroting price hike warnings or highlighting the one- to two-million-barrel diesel purchases of state-run Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) that may barely last five to 10 days anyway. On top of that, she is also scrambling to negotiate storage space with oil companies for the government-procured oil. Somehow, these actions expose how fragmented and lacking in coherence the government’s crisis response has become.

And has the DOE even come clean about what kind of diesel it actually purchased? Because if industry whispers are right that it is Euro-2, then what they secured is not a solution but a mismatch. In fact, there are already industry talks that even trucking companies have rejected it because they cannot afford to run the risk of operating on fuel that could damage their vehicles, since that kind of oil belongs to a bygone era that the industry has already outgrown.

Even within the sphere of the energy emergency declaration, there is an urgent need for the DOE and PNOC to lift the veil of secrecy and publicly disclose the full trail of government oil purchases: how much was spent per barrel, where the fuel is allocated, who ultimately receives it, and where the revenues would flow back. These are public funds at work, and Filipinos deserve accountability grounded in facts—not left to guesswork.

In her April 7 press conference, Garin cited a 50.42-day fuel inventory and projected, almost reassuringly, that it could sustain demand until mid-May. She further framed the 50-day stock as if it were a comfortable cushion rather than a nearly depleted supply pool already ticking toward the next replenishment cycle.

The Secretary noted that fuel procurement carries a seven- to 10-day lead time, plus about a week for delivery. However, in the middle of a fast-moving fuel scarcity dilemma, that timeline feels less like a safety net and more like a blunt reminder that even in “normal” conditions, the system already operates within a dangerously thin buffer against supply disruption.

On closer examination, those inventory numbers are not just plain data but convey a full story the public deserves to see in its entirety—not in bits and pieces, spin, or selective disclosure—because every digit represents verifiable supply on the ground, real shortages felt by consumers, and legitimate accountability that cannot be buried under technical jargon or diluted by headlines.

So far, what the DOE has failed to flesh out behind the numbers is the concrete and full supply picture: company by company, from pump stocks to storage tanks and in-transit cargo, down to dealer allocations and the regional flow of volumes across provinces. Without that level of transparency, the so-called “inventory” remains nothing more than a headline figure that masks the uneven reality on the ground, where some areas are already running dry while others appear comfortably supplied.

Beyond the patchy fuel shortages already hitting several parts of the country, anger is also mounting over how Philippine oil prices seem to be racing ahead of the rest of the world. While that outcome is largely predictable due to the country’s heavy reliance on imported oil, what stands out most is how little relief has come from the government or the DOE to soften the financial blow on consumers who are already being squeezed at every turn.

Nevertheless, if the DOE were just as sharp in scrutinizing the numbers with real precision instead of leaning on wild assumptions, it may still find the needed leverage to help tame prices—and close the gaps where profiteering may be slipping through the cracks amid the crisis.

At this point, instead of channeling resources into a planned Energy Museum, it might be better for the DOE to invest in credible and granular data systems; because simply declaring “50-day inventory” or “enough crude supply until June” is not efficient supply management, but oversimplified accounting that obscures the real situation rather than providing clarity on our way out of this market turbulence.

And for oil price adjustments to be truly understood and ideally contained, the DOE must go beyond surface-level summaries and rigorously track the evidence-backed drivers of pricing volatilities: from global benchmarks like Dubai and Brent crude with their daily and weekly swings, to Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) pricing fluctuations for gasoline, diesel, and kerosene; as these are not mere numerical indicators but critical pressure points directly transmitted into what Filipinos ultimately pay at the pumps.

Further, the DOE must keep a tight watch on the “end-to-end pricing chain” that shapes pump prices, including the Philippine peso-US dollar exchange rate that influences “petrodollar” fuel transactions, freight costs per barrel and insurance premiums, oil company margins per liter compared with historical values—as these could flag possible padding or abnormal mark-ups—biofuel blending costs (in effect, ethanol for gasoline and CME for biodiesel), and of course fuel taxes like the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) and excise. Only when all these moving parts are properly tracked and stitched together can the government see where it has tangible leverage to soften surging fuel prices.

If only the DOE had been sharper in dissecting the numbers, or had it earned the courage to enforce the fuel cost unbundling policy already upheld by the Supreme Court (SC), it would have been far easier to see whether oil companies are genuinely pricing fairly or padding margins, and to ascertain where the government still has room to cushion the blow of weekly price adjustments instead of reacting in the dark.

The oil companies have repeatedly asserted that detailed reports on their inventories and cost components of weekly price adjustments are regularly submitted to the DOE, so there is no excuse for those figures to sit idle in DOE office files—they should be actively processed, evaluated in detail, and used to expose where the industry is being strained or potentially exploited amid the lingering energy supply disruption.

And by the way, whatever happened to those show cause orders issued by the DOE in the early days of the US-Israel and Iran conflict? The public deserves more than press releases and warnings; it warrants closure on whether any profiteers were actually held to account, or if those orders simply dissolved into paperwork while the crisis on the ground kept rolling on.

If there is one clear pattern among past Energy Secretaries during the country’s worst oil and power crises, it is that they left the comfort of their offices and went directly into the field to confront conditions on the ground, rather than relying solely on press conferences and closed-door meetings. It is only through that kind of direct exposure that the factual scale of consumer hardship could be truly felt.

The question now is whether the current administration has followed the same path. So far, on the basis of what is visible to the public, the answer appears painfully clear—no.

In the 1990s’ worst power crisis, when Filipinos endured the harsh reality of 10- to 12-hour blackouts, then Energy Secretary Delfin Lazaro and state-run National Power Corp. (NPC) President Francisco Viray were given a six-month ultimatum, yet they delivered results not through optics or delay, but by getting straight to work: securing investments, tightening strategy, and focusing relentlessly on practical solutions that helped plug the widening power supply gap.

Around 2008, when global oil prices spiked to a record $147 per barrel—even higher than in this US-Iran war—due to the unexpected China-India economic boom, then Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes adopted a “shared pain” approach, pushing for staggered price adjustments to soften the blow on consumers while also calling for a review of industry books to strengthen transparency. These measures helped absorb the shock without undermining the financial viability of oil firms.

During the Mindanao power crisis, which peaked under the Benigno Aquino III administration, former Energy Secretary Rene Almendras went directly to the field and faced “heated” stakeholder consultations and real-time assessments at the frontline. He later pushed forward the controversial “coal plants solution”—a tough but necessary call that ultimately gained acceptance because it was anchored on the consent of affected consumers first, rather than being imposed through detached and office-bound decision-making.

Then when super-typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) struck in November 2013 and devastated Tacloban City while plunging much of the Visayas region—including Cebu, Leyte, Samar, Bohol, and Biliran provinces—into widespread blackouts, former Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla stayed mostly on the ground tracking restoration efforts firsthand. He even went as far as staking his position on a public deadline, vowing to resign if power was not restored by Christmas, to emphasize the scale of recovery efforts that needed to be delivered immediately.

Of course, let us give Secretary Garin the benefit of the doubt if efforts are indeed underway, but the fundamental question is whether the DOE is actually deploying the right interventions or simply busy working on things without traction. Compounding this concern is the apparent silence of the more seasoned DOE officials, allegedly due to a “gag order,” which only deepens the lack of transparency at a time when the public is asking for absolute clarity.

Bluntly speaking, what the public remembers most clearly is Garin making more visible rounds at gas stations when she was still securing permanency in her appointment as Energy Secretary—an image that now stands in sharp contrast to the expectation of sustained and decisive DOE leadership in the middle of an actual energy crisis.