Are you afraid of the dark? Well, that depends on whether we are talking about horror movies or the national power supply!

Just when Filipino consumers thought they could finally survive the summer’s rotational blackouts, the international energy market strolled in like a sequel villain, seemingly saying: “Oops, not so fast—the next level of suffering is still loading.”

Halfway across the region, Indonesia’s policy overhaul on its commodity exports, including those for electricity-grade coal, could cast an even bigger shadow over the Philippines’ energy future. Suffice it to say, the storm is far from over. The Middle East crisis continues to shake global oil and gas markets, and the world’s energy supply chain remains dangerously unstable.

Last week, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto threw a major curveball into global energy markets when he announced that the country’s commodity exports will now be centralized under its sovereign wealth fund, Danantara Sumberdaya. It is a decisive move to tighten state control and extract greater revenue from the country’s resource wealth.

However, for a coal-import-dependent country like the Philippines, Indonesia’s policy shift is more than just foreign economic news; it could become the next major threat to the stability of its baseload power supply and overall grid networks.

Several local power generation companies are already warning that Indonesia’s policy revision could tear up the rulebook mid-game, triggering jitters over thermal coal supply stability and shaking even signed, long-term contracts with private suppliers.

As one Philippine power producer puts it: “Uncertainty is now the only certainty because even our Indonesian coal suppliers are left in the dark. They don’t have concrete answers to our questions at this point, as the new policy remains unclear and unstructured.”

Industry data shows that the Philippines remains heavily dependent on Indonesian coal, with its import share swinging between 60 percent and 70 percent—and in some years even higher, depending on prices, shipping conditions, demand, and the dispatch of the country's coal fleets.

The implication is clear: a large majority of the coal powering the Philippines’ electricity system is Indonesian-sourced. Therefore, the domestic power industry is tightly bound to the supply decisions and pricing policies of its ASEAN neighbor.

Fundamentally, the Philippine power system operates on borrowed fuel, relying on imported coal for roughly 90% of its needs—mainly from Indonesia, as stated—to keep baseload plants running and electricity flowing day and night.

Beyond Indonesia’s policy shake-up, the Philippines faces another looming question mark: the wobbly future of the Semirara coal mine. Its 50-year contract is heading toward a 2027 expiry, and the government is pushing for a new auction process.

Despite pleas for a contract extension, the Department of Energy (DOE) has drawn a hard line, opting to mandate a new round of competitive bidding that effectively resets the future of the project.

But what does all this mean for a power supply already running on razor-thin reserves?

Growing concerns are surfacing over whether the future winning bidder for the Semirara coal mine will actually possess the technical expertise to operate it, especially amid reports that one interested party (which may corner the asset) has little to no real coal mining experience.

Semirara’s coal is not just a commodity; it is a lifeline for the country’s power supply. It powers plants like the Batangas-sited SEM-Calaca and South Luzon Power Generation Corp. of the Consunji group, and even serves as a stabilizing blend for imported coal at other facilities.

At this point, Filipino consumers are dealing not just with one power problem, but with three converging pressures: external coal export policy recalibration, domestic mining uncertainty, and an already fragile electricity system that is manifestly lacking in baseload power capacity.

This should serve as a critical wake-up call for the DOE to refocus on energy security while ensuring that strategic energy assets are protected from opportunistic interests and short-term political power plays.

Every Energy Secretary has tried to dodge the “Prince or Princess of Darkness” label. Yet, with recurring rotational blackouts under the Marcos administration, the risk is growing that a failure to fix the system could cement a dark legacy for the sitting energy authorities.

From oil price surges triggered by Middle East instability to persistent rotational blackouts, the DOE finds itself facing mounting public frustration as Filipinos feel trapped in a continuous loop of one energy crisis after another. In fact, aggrieved consumers are now half-joking and half-lamenting that the DOE leadership might be cursed (may balat) or simply carrying a persistent streak of bad luck.

For now, even after repairs to recent transmission line trippings and the re-synchronization of a major plant that suffered a forced outage, the persistence of yellow and red alerts exposes a more fundamental issue: an underlying shortage in baseload capacity.

With the Visayas grid already under severe supply strain and the Luzon grid not far behind, the issue is no longer about capacity additions on paper, but whether the DOE has truly planned the system with the efficiency and foresight the power grid actually demands.

The sector is filled with announcements of large-scale green energy auctions (GEAs). But to reiterate, beneath the long-term ambition lies a short-term gap that remains unfixed: the lack of sufficient baseload power.

What is becoming increasingly infuriating is that even consumers under Retail Electricity Suppliers (RES)—who were promised choice and reliability—are now being pulled into the same rotational blackout warnings as the rest of the grid.

DOE, pay attention: when system planning falls short, the so-called “power of choice” becomes meaningless, because no one chooses to be plunged into darkness.

If the current string of problems in the energy sector is not addressed quickly and efficiently, history has a way of rewriting leadership. Like it or not, Secretary Sharon Garin’s tenure may end up being remembered more for an era of darkness than for leading the country toward the light.