- Fishing communities along the Philippines’ Verde Island Passage, a haven for marine biodiversity, say the development of a natural gas import hub in the area is leading to environmental degradation.
- Fishers say their catches have declined since a liquefied natural gas plant was built in the area a decade ago, and that they’re being turned away from remaining fishing grounds due to the ongoing construction of an LNG terminal.
- The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, a key funder of the LNG project, denies these claims, saying in a recent report that it didn’t find evidence that LNG development had led to environmental degradation or a reduction in income for local fishing communities.
BATANGAS CITY, Philippines — On a hot October afternoon near the largest oil and gas port in the Philippines, the roar of a nearby natural gas tanker drowned out conversations on the shore. Wilma Abanil and her husband, Joseph Vargas, have called Santa Clara, a fishing village on the shore of Batangas Bay, home for decades. Standing outside a neighbor’s house, the couple explained how their home was destroyed by a tropical storm, Trami, that passed through days before.
Storms aren’t the only threat they face. They live in a shipping channel touted by the government as a superhighway for liquefied natural gas. Local officials have repeatedly asked them to leave, to allow for the LNG companies whose plants surround them to expand their operations. “They told me, ‘Do not be an obstacle to the development of this town,’” Abanil says. “We want a simple life, but they say we are an obstacle.”
When Mongabay caught back up with Abanil and Vargas in May this year, they still hadn’t been able to save up enough money to rebuild their home. The couple and their seven children have all but lost their main source of income. “There are no fish to catch in this area because of the power plant,” Vargas says.
About 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, fisherman Jaime Ulysses Gilera has seen his daily catch dwindle. Off the coast of Mabini, a peninsula world-famous for its muck diving, he says the health of corals has deteriorated since a nearby LNG plant was built a decade ago. He blames sedimentation from the plant for compounding ongoing coral bleaching linked to climate change. “Our corals became white,” Gilera says.
He used to take his boat out to the waters of nearby Ilijan in the Verde Island Passage, a renowned marine biodiversity hotspot. Since last year, however, he’s been turned away due to the construction of a massive new LNG terminal financed by the country’s largest utility companies.
Unable to fish, Abanil and Gilera have instead dedicated themselves to a campaign opposing the Ilijan terminal, along with several other LNG projects they say will destroy what’s left of the marine ecosystem. The protesters, led by a coalition largely organized by the Manila-based Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED), have directly petitioned the companies and financers behind the area’s LNG projects.
The Philippines has invested heavily in LNG, an energy source touted by its proponents as a transition fuel. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has said he envisions the Philippines as an LNG trading and transshipment hub for the Asia-Pacific region, and nearly two dozen LNG terminals are planned for the shores of Batangas, including the Verde Island Passage. The country’s sole gas field is at risk of running dry by 2027, and discovering and building new drilling facilities would cost billions of dollars, driving the need for fuel imports.
In January, Marcos signed a law encouraging the development of the domestic natural gas industry, mandating the government to “promote natural gas as a safe, efficient and cost-effective source of energy.” Environmental groups had pleaded with Marcos to veto the bill, saying it would lock the country into a reliance on fossil fuels.
Energy experts say that while burning LNG releases less air pollution than burning coal, the fuel has a massive carbon footprint across its entire production cycle. “LNG is not a transition fuel. The carbon intensity is about the same as coal,” says Kurt Metzger, head of the energy transition program at Singapore-based Asia Research & Engagement. “We need to take a hard look at the investment being done.”
The Amazon of the oceans
The Philippine government has focused on the Batangas area due to its proximity to Manila — it’s just a two-hour drive south of the sprawling capital — and its shipping lanes. The Verde Island Passage connects the South China Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, making it an ideal transshipment point.
But the passage is also a marine sanctuary dubbed the “Amazon of the Oceans,” filled with hundreds of coral reefs and fish species, and is said to have the world’s highest concentration of shorefish biodiversity.
“With its strategic location, it’s very vulnerable to industrialization,” says Jayvee Saco, head of the Verde Island Passage Center for Oceanographic Research and Aquatic Life Sciences at Batangas State University, Lobo.
“Building the plant within the coastal area, you’re changing the topography of the area,” Saco says. “There will be a domino effect in the marine environment.”
Development along the shorelines increases the rate of sedimentation, creating open space that becomes populated by green seaweed. Sedimentation, along with rising temperatures, is a factor that can cause corals to bleach. “There will be stress, and there will be coral bleaching,” Saco says. “There’s a high possibility of shifting from a coral reef area to a seaweed dominated area.”
In 2023, the passage was named a “hope spot” by the nonprofit Mission Blue, in recognition of ongoing efforts by local advocates to have it designated a protected area by the Philippines and the International Maritime Organization.
But developers have forged ahead, led by San Miguel Corporation, a Philippine conglomerate mostly known for its beer and shopping malls. Last year, it teamed up with power companies Meralco and Aboitiz to invest $3.3 billion in the Ilijan LNG-to-power terminal.
The project has received financing from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which has been criticized for funding harmful projects in several countries. JBIC also funded the Linseed LNG import terminal in the Verde Island Passage, which a 2022 study said led to “alarming levels of pollutants” being released into the water. That terminal was acquired last year by the San Miguel–Meralco–Aboitiz consortium.
“It’s like the giants joining forces,” says Aryanne De Ocampo, campaigns head at CEED.
These megacorporations enjoy a friendly political environment, both at the national level and within Batangas province. In June 2024, an Associated Press investigation revealed that companies affiliated with then-Batangas Governor Hermilando Mandanas own real estate where natural gas developments are being built, creating a conflict of interest that ethics experts said warranted Mandanas’s removal from office. His family firm, AbaCore Capital Holdings Inc., is also behind its own gas power project in Batangas, the report said.
Despite these findings, Mandanas was elected vice governor in elections this May after serving the maximum three terms as governor. The Ombudsman of the Philippines, the office responsible for investigating political crime and corruption, has not launched a probe into Mandanas.
Alongside the financial issues are the deep concerns that unrestrained development will disrupt an already fragile marine environment in the Verde Island Passage.
“The coastal areas serve as spawning grounds for fish,” De Ocampo says. “For the marine creatures in the VIP, we are already concerned that they are getting affected by the construction and operation.”
In late October 2024, days after Tropical Storm Trami passed through Batangas, Gilera caught a fish that he says smelled like gas. He says he cooked it and took a bite, only for his nose to be filled with the noxious fumes. Batangas authorities said an oil tanker docked in the Port of Batangas had tilted, but denied that any oil had spilled.
But in Santa Clara, Abanil and Vargas say the entire village stopped fishing for nearly two months. “The fish smelled and tasted like gasoline,” Vargas says.
The incident highlighted the dangers of building fossil fuel infrastructure in an area severely prone to typhoons and tropical storms. In 2023, the oil tanker MV Princess Empress started sinking off the coast of Mindoro, the main island just south of Batangas, as it carried 800,000 liters (211,000 gallons) of industrial fuel oil. CEED last year calculated the environmental damage at 41.2 billion pesos ($728 million), or 800 times the government’s estimate.
Fishing communities have been left in dire straits, reporting drastically reduced income and being forced to sail to neighboring islands, such as Mindoro, to find viable fishing grounds.
Gilera and Abanil were part of a group that petitioned investors in the Ilijan project to conduct an environmental review. Their catch has dwindled to one-tenth of what it was just 10 years ago, Gilera says.
One investor, JBIC, initially agreed to a meeting and said it would conduct an environmental review. Some residents of the Batangas fishing communities traveled abroad to meet them, including a friend of Gilera’s.
“He explained that the companies they are financing are destroying our environment,” Gilera says. “And he told the Japanese, ‘Why did you not put the power plant in Japan but in the Philippines?’”
But the JBIC review failed to satisfy the protestors. In its report, released last year, JBIC said it didn’t find evidence that LNG development had led to a reduction in income for local fishing communities, nor did it find evidence of environmental degradation.
Abanil had gathered data showing JBIC representatives that her average catch had declined since the LNG terminals were opened in the area. She was no longer able to fish near her home due to the presence of First Gen, the owner of the LNG terminal in Santa Clara producing the noise that drowns out the sound of the waves. Now, she can’t fish in Ilijan either.
In Ilijan, security guards carrying long rifles now keep watch at the terminal’s imposing gates. Most fishers have left, and those who remain hesitate to speak critically about the terminal. They’re prohibited from fishing within 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) of the terminal, Gilera says. Fishers who approached the terminal have reported that guards met them on boats, aiming their guns at them, he says.
Gilera says the giant fuel tankers plying these waters make no effort to avoid fishers, sailing directly over their nets and destroying them. “The Coast Guard did not take any action,” he says. “They told them to go back home and repair the damage.” But the JBIC report said it didn’t find evidence to substantiate those claims either.
Last year, a fish die-off was reported on the shores of Ilijan, adjacent to the terminal. Still, further protests to JBIC and to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources have yielded no results.
“It was my expectation,” Vargas says of the report. “We are poor and JBIC is a business.”
When contacted by Mongabay, JBIC pointed to their 2024 report, and specified that they do not directly provide financing or equity investments for the project. “JBIC’s involvement in the Project is limited to recognizing the Project through its equity investments in the Project’s EPC contractor, which is a minority shareholder of the Project proponent. Nevertheless, JBIC expects the Project proponent to take appropriate measures to address environmental considerations and to engage in constructive dialogue with the local communities,” the bank said in a statement.
San Miguel did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.
Abanil and Vargas already had a long road ahead of them. Even before the tropical storm, their community had no municipal power and relied on solar panels for electricity.
A FirstGen tanker rumbles in the background. It gets noisier and smellier at night, they say.
Their children, most of whom didn’t graduate from university, have taken temporary construction jobs when they can find them. When they do fish, they’re lucky to catch 5 kilograms (11 pounds) per day — a far cry from the 20 kg (44 lbs) or more they used to catch.
Between the noise and stench of tankers, the restrictions on fishing, and the fish tasting like oil, fishers Abanil and Vargas say they feel their communities are being pushed away from areas like Santa Clara, leaving their fate in the hands of the developers.
“They must respect our culture,” Vargas says. “This is our livelihood. This is where we want to live.”
“If we die,” Abanil adds, “we die here.”
Banner image: Joseph Vargas and Wilma Abanil in their home in Santa Clara before it was destroyed, Feb. 20, 2024. Image Nick Aspinwall for Mongabay.
Philippines oil spill may reverberate long after cleanup declared complete
Citation:
Tuttle, L. J., & Donahue, M. J. (2022). Effects of sediment exposure on corals: A systematic review of experimental studies. Environmental Evidence, 11(1). doi:10.1186/s13750-022-00256-0
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