(Eagle News)—Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio on Wednesday, March 27, said a 1972 law turned the oil and gas in Reed Bank into patrimonial assets.
Carpio made the statement after Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo gave the assurance Reed Bank would not be seized by China if the Southeast Asian country failed to pay its P3.6-billion loan for the Chico River irrigation project.
Panelo had said that in the first place, Reed Bank was a public property that cannot be given away, leased or sold without an enabling law or a presidential proclamation.
But according to Carpio, the oil and gas of Reed Bank were patrimonial assets as they were subject to sale to the market based on a service contract inked between the Department of Energy and Forum Energy, an oil company.
Carpio earlier made a distinction between assets for public or governmental use, and patrimonial assets and assets dedicated to commercial use.
According to Carpio, Section 8 of the Oil and Exploration Development Act of 1972, as amended says that “the (service) contract may authorize the Contractor to take and dispose of and market either domestically or for export all petroleum produced under the contract subject to supplying the domestic requirements of the Republic of the Philippines on a pro-rata basis.”
“The power to reclassify from public domain to patrimonial is a legislative power. The president’s power to so reclassify was merely delegated by Congress,” he added.
Carpio had criticized the Philippines’ loan with China, saying Manila “expressedly waived any sovereign immunity” over all its assets except for some.
But Finance Assistant Secretary Antonio Lambino for his part said it was Carpio himself who penned a 2002 SC decision that said that patrimonial assets were “not things that can increase the national wealth, that have a public purpose or have a public use.”
He said based on this definition, Reed Bank was not a patrimonial asset.
