For the fourth time in 30 years, the issue of coal mining in Catanduanes has resurfaced, reviving the dormant opposition to any attempt to exploit the rich mineral resources in Bicol’s largest remaining forest reserve.
During the term of then Virac Mayor Cito Alberto, several truckloads of coal from an old stockpile at the Campo Ermitanyo coal mine managed to get shipped out of the island before it was cut short by an investigation.
In 2008, then Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, who killed himself in front of his mother’s grave in 2011, issued Small-Scale Coal Mining Permit No. 2008-018 to Policarpio Torres.
The permit allowed to extract 7,333 tons a year for five years at Campo Ermitanyo in barangay San Miguel, Panganiban under the supervision of Monte Oro Resources Energy Inc. (MOREI), itself granted a Coal Operating Contract covering 7,000 hectares in Panganiban, San Andres and Caramoran.
In five years, the Monte Oro contract would have produced 1.5 million metric tons worth P6.2 billion, with the national government earning P186 million as royalty, LGUs getting a mere P9 million in taxes and workers an estimated P10 million in wages.
The controversy that followed reached both houses of Congress, with then Senator Juan Ponce Enrile scuttling a proposed probe by saying the company had already aborted the project.
In 2012, the DOE again awarded the same COC to Altura Mining Limited of Australia through its Philippine subsidiary.
Then Board of Investments (BOI) Investments Servicing Group executive director Atty. Raul Angeles, who would be sacked as FICELCO director 14 years later, said coal-bed methane plants could provide adequate and affordable power.
The Altura contract came to nothing and it took 10 years before any other effort to mine Catanduanes coal was launched.
In 2023, there were verified reports of coal mining activity in San Miguel and Cabuyoan, both in Panganiban, with the authorities later seizing 90 sacks of coal in Cabuyoan.
Later that year, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan under then Vice Gov. Peter Cua temporarily suspended an ordinance declaring Catanduanes as a Mining-Free Zone, leading to the issuance of an SSCMP to Adelbert Almario in February 2024.
The resulting furor raised by the Church and environmentalists forced the SP to reconsider and take back the temporary suspension of the ordinance.
In the current controversy, it would be interesting to know who is financing Almario’s coal mining project as well as its actual location relative to the boundaries of the Catanduanes Natural Park declared by Congress as a protected area in 2018, as well as the site of the previous permit given to Almario in 2024.
It would be safe to say that the previous permit covered a site well within the protected area.
But bet on the possibility that the new site is outside the CNP and therefore not covered by ENIPAS law’s prohibition on any commercial of minerals.
The determination of the new site’s location relative to the boundaries of the natural park would fall on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), particularly OIC-PENRO Vivian Escoto.
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