THE high cost of raw materials and the high demand for services have prompted Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.’s mother company to hold off any major investments in the country for the meantime, Edgar Chua, the company country chairman, told reporters on Saturday.

“We will not be able to push through at this point with the major investment that we were considering. The problem arose when we looked at the budget and noticed that the actual cost of expanding our facilities in our Tabangao [Batangas] refinery had increased by as much as 40 percent,” Chua said.

He attributed the sudden jump in the project cost to the huge demand in services and raw materials.

“Expanding our facilities does not make sense. For the meantime, we will wait for the market to cool down, which is within two to three years,” he said.

Citing the stringent requirements of the Clean Air Act of 2001, Chua admitted that Shell is currently looking at other options that will enable the company to meet and comply with the requirements of the said law between 2011 and 2012.

Chua stressed that Shell remains uncertain on what it will do, considering that there are also a number of upgrading options that it could implement.

He added that costs to upgrade facilities are now being reviewed and that a team has been created to look into that. “We have yet to have estimates before, though initially an upgrade could cost us around P100 to P200 million—but that’s very sensitive and are just assumptions,” he said.

Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla, on the other hand, said that Shell remains committed to stay in the country; it’s just a matter of timing as to when it will expand its facility.

“Before the issue was should we have stay or leave. And this time, the company is very committed in staying, but whether it will be upgrading first then expansion at a certain date, it will come at a right time given international developments,” Lotilla said.

He stressed that Shell is not limited to just expanding, saying Petron before expanding its facilities, conducted an upgrade first.

“It’s really not a case where there will be no new capital investments to be poured into the country from Shell’s end, but just a question of time when these investments will come,” Lotilla concluded.

CENTRAL bank officials believe that now or anytime soon is the opportune time to come out with a new retail treasury bond sale program for overseas Filipino workers, when interest rates are low and investor sentiment still sharp.

FILIPINOS may be tremendously benefiting from $12 billion worth of annual remittances sent by relatives working abroad, but seen from a broader scale there could be blips that might weigh down on income equality, local employment and country competitiveness, a labor economist said Friday.

IF done in a clean and honest manner, the coming midterm election could be a good barometer of the real pulse of the people on such issues as Charter change and the legitimacy of the Arroyo administration, the vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said on Sunday. 

THE high cost of raw materials and the high demand for services have prompted Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.’s mother company to hold off any major investments in the country for the meantime, Edgar Chua, the company country chairman, told reporters on Saturday.

LUZON and the Visayas appear to be attractive sites for companies planning to put up ethanol distilleries following the enactment of the alternative fuels law, according to the Department of Agriculture.

THE almost traditionally debt-laden National Power Corporation always needs money, so why is Malacañang demanding that it hand over its 2005 dividends of P2.6 billion, especially at this time when the Palace continues to claim government has so much funds it is running out its ears?

WORRIED it would open the door to further “tinkering of similar money and other funds,” Anakpawis party-list Reps. Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano have called for an investigation into the plan of the Presidential Commission on Good Government to use the P1.9-billion dividend of Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) for undisclosed projects.