Date, please

The Department of Energy has good reasons for scrapping its 2026 coal bidding round. But it has not given Semirara Island a clear timeline.

Count the shifting promises. In February, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said the Semirara contract would be bid out within the year. By May, the auction might resume by mid-2026. Come July, she said new rules would take weeks. Then the DOE terminated the round entirely on Sept. 15. Now Garin tells Rappler a rebid is coming in a few weeks.

Coal Operating Contract No. 5 expires on July 14, 2027. That leaves exactly nine and a half months.

The DOE does have a point. Under the current contract, Semirara Mining and Power Corp. pays no taxes aside from income tax, according to Philstar. The state only collects a separate contract share. Yet the Semirara blocks hold an estimated 160 million metric tons of coal. The department absolutely should demand better terms for proven state-owned reserves. The government is 50 years late in doing so.

SMPC is no bystander here. It is the incumbent operator and an applicant in the scrapped round. It is also the petitioner in a Makati court case fighting for rights to assets any future successor would need. The DOE cited this dispute as a reason for pulling the auction. Fair enough.

The island is already paying the price. SMPC filed a redundancy notice for 462 mine-site workers in August because of the contract uncertainty. At the Sept. 25 rally, residents carried cardboard signs reading “DOE, trabaho namin ito!” They were fighting for their livelihoods. Their signs said nothing about national energy security.

The rest of the country will pay later. SMPC produces over 90 percent of our domestic coal. Meanwhile, Indonesia is rolling out a state-controlled export regime in the first quarter of 2027. We rely heavily on Indonesia for imported coal. These two major deadlines sit only months apart.

This leaves urgent questions for Secretary Garin. On what exact date will the new framework be published? Will the public see a draft first? Most importantly, what happens on July 15, 2027, if no contract is signed?

The DOE will hate the answer to that last question. Announcing a short interim arrangement right now is the only way to end the guessing on the island. That arrangement would almost certainly run through SMPC. Ironically, this is the same operator whose old terms the government claims undervalued public coal. This is the steep cost of waiting so long to act.

Any new contract must include a publicly audited transition fund for workers and the host communities of Caluya and Antique. Both local governments must be consulted in writing before fixing any terms. Every peso for this fund will eat into the bids offered to the government. The DOE needs to admit this reality and accept a smaller headline profit.

None of this requires settling the financial debate first. It simply requires a firm date.

The 462 workers SMPC declared redundant already got theirs.