Mini-oil refinery to be established in Tawi-Tawi

ZAMBOANGA CITY – The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has continued attracting investments despite the uncertainty of the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Regional Board of Investments (RBOI) Chair Ishak Mastura said that during the last Joint Board and Management Committee Meeting for 2015 held last Wednesday for 2015 in Cotabato City, RBOI provisionally approved the registration of the investment of Southsea Industrial Energy Corporation, a 471-million minioil refinery, which would include storage depots in Tubig-Indangan, Simunul, Tawi-Tawi.

According to Mastura, Southsea is a wholly Filipino-owned company which will put up the first of its kind mini oil-refinery in the country using a new and innovative technology from South Korea with the assistance of a South Korean technical partner.

As such, the board provisionally approved the project pending the release of the endorsement of the project by the Department of Energy by the end of the month.

It is expected to start its commercial operations in the last quarter of 2017 and will provide 100 jobs, according to Mastura.

But Promotion of Investment Sustainability Organization (PISO) lead convener Edgar Bullecer, who belongs to the growing banana export industry in the ARMM, said that if the draft Basic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (BLBAR), which provides less powers than the ARMM Organic Act, is passed, it will surely discourage and unsettle investors and affect the ease of doing business in the region.

He said investment rules will be changed by the BLBAR so that the power to issue permits and approvals for projects, which the ARMM already enjoys, will revert back to the central government.