Oil companies are taking a public-relations pounding over the successive oil-price increases. The government, too, is taking some of the heat. Hoping to capitalize on the public’s anger over the high oil prices, some critics and opposition politicians have found a political opening to pile on the President and his administration for supposedly doing nothing even as oil companies continue to rake in huge profits and the ordinary Filipino struggles to cope.

But what can the government really do to help contain oil prices? The solutions, it seems, are in the hands of Congress. Pending in Congress is a slew of populist bills meant to bring oil prices down. Indeed, some of these bills have been pending there for years, filed and re-filed each new term (this is currently the 15th Congress), languishing in committees, with not one lucky enough to make it to or past floor debates.  

The most popular, the “silver bullet” solution, so to speak, is amending the oil-deregulation law or Republic Act (RA) 8479. The law is clearly not working because, even as it has brought in 66 new oil players in the industry to date, there is still a cartel-like environment that allows oil companies to dictate prices. More competition should have kept both prices and profits down, but this did not happen.   

Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay, a known administration critic, acknowledges the current law renders the government powerless to curb oil prices. Oil firms are allowed to increase prices as they see fit. She said amending the oil-deregulation law would give the government powers to stop price increases “should it feel that the firms are going overboard in implementing hikes.”

The proposed amendments to the law are many and may include those that expand the powers of the government, in particular, the Department of Energy, to regulate and supervise the oil industry, impose harsh penalties against predatory pricing, increase transparency in oil pricing, and provide more financial assistance to encourage more investment and competition in the industry.

There are also bills meant to scrap RA 8479 altogether, to revert to a government-regulated oil industry, or even establish a nationalized oil industry, which is surely a daunting proposition for an already cash-strapped government. With world oil prices so high, where would government get the money to subsidize the difference between the crude it buys from the international market and the cheaper one that it sells locally?

Then there are the measures addressing oil taxes, like those meant to either remove or reduce the 12-percent value-added tax on oil, or that of Senator Trillanes’s recently filed bill, which would set a 12-percent cap on oil companies’ annual profits and impose a hefty windfall-profit tax of 50 percent to 80 percent on profits exceeding that cap. 

Even if all these measures fail to see the light of day at the end of that long legislative tunnel, at the very least, scheduling public hearings on them would probably release some of the almost homicidal fury that some of our people already feel for oil companies and the government. We do hope though that discussing and debating these bills in earnest in the congressional committees, and hopefully beyond, on the floors of both Houses, would amount to something more than shaming sessions. Unpopular as these oil companies are, and perhaps as deserving as they are of caricaturing, we don’t need more howling at the moon. We need real answers and solutions.

This paper has argued in a previous editorial that, over the long term, the most effective measure is the hardest to implement: to promote efficiency and cut demand growth in the country’s energy use. At least on this, the government is doing something right, as the DOE under the Aquino administration has begun to accelerate the exploration and development of indigenous energy sources while promoting energy efficiency and conservation in the public and private sectors.

Oil is a world commodity that is bought and sold at an inequitable market that many condemn but can’t do anything about. Despite that inequitable market, oil is even more in demand now in many countries than it was a decade or two ago.

The Philippines is not the only one struggling with high oil prices. Most countries in the world are. Until we, as a nation, can reduce our demand for oil, by being more energy efficient in our households and offices, by improving traffic and transport facilities, by investing in renewable energy, indeed, by changing the very way we live, we can expect high oil prices. And no congressman or senator, not even the President, can do anything about it.