MANILA: The Philippines signed on Saturday preliminary agreements to begin exploring emergency oil access in Indonesia and Thailand, initiatives aimed at strengthening energy security against supply disruptions from the Middle East triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Philippine state-run oil and gas exploration firm PNOC-EC signed separate letters of intent with Indonesia’s Interport Mandiri Utama and the Shell Company of Thailand Limited on the sidelines of the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, held ahead of the ASEAN Summit, which Manila will begin to host starting Sunday.
The projects will involve the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia and the Indonesian Business Council as knowledge partners and are focused on “exploring possible areas of cooperation related to oil ticketing mechanisms,” ERIA said in a statement.
This includes the “potential use of existing oil storage facilities in Indonesia and Thailand to support oil supply security and emergency preparedness in the Philippines,” it added.
According to ERIA, an oil ticketing arrangement would allow a participating entity to pay for the right to access oil held in another country’s storage facilities in an emergency, thus reducing the need for governments to build new storage facilities and purchase additional oil stocks upfront.
Such a system has been adopted in the EU and elsewhere but will be the first of its kind in…
