Irony of ironies
In November of each year, the Annual National Mine Safety and Environment Conference (Anmsec) is held in Baguio City. It is spearheaded by the Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association (PMSEA), which is said to be the country’s forerunner in the promotion of occupational safety and health, sound environmental management, and social responsibility in the minerals industry.
Anmsec is the biggest gathering in the mining industry composed of mining companies, mining contractors and suppliers, students, professional organizations, community relations officers, and government officials. The event held last November was held in coordination with Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Mines and Geosciences Bureau, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, the Philippine Society of Mining Engineers (PSEM), mining companies, quarries, cement plants, suppliers, service contractors and other professional organizations.
One of the highlights of the event is the Presidential Mineral Industry Environmental Award (PMIEA) which is given in recognition of companies’ efforts in achieving environmentally and socially responsible surface mining and mineral processing operations.
According to media reports, SR Metals Inc. (SRMI) and Coral Bay Nickel Corp. (CBNC) bagged this year’s awards.
SRMI was recognized for its surface-mining operation, while CBNC topped the mineral-processing category, besting 20 other companies.
The flagship venture of SRMI is the Tubay Nickel Mining Project in Agusan del Norte, Philippines which is said to showcase best mining practices and state-of-the-art mining operations, while CBNC operates a hydrometallurgical processing plant in Rio Tuba, Palawan, to produce nickel and cobalt sulfide from existing stockpiles of lowgrade nickel ores from the Rio Tuba nickel mine of Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corp.
SRMI and CBNC were also last year’s PMIEA recipients, together with OceanaGold Philippines Inc., which won in the surface-mining operation category.
According to SRMI’s advertisements, it has already scored a three-peat, trumpeting it in a full-page broadsheet advertisement.
The grant of the presidential award last year to SMRI, however, seems to be ironic considering that President Duterte, even when he was still running for president, could not hide his dislike of SMRI and its owner Francis Eric Gutierrez.
Newspapers reported that in 2016, Duterte accused his rival Mar Roxas of protecting SMRI since Roxas had been using the company’s plane in his campaign sorties.
Duterte said the government could not stop the operations of SMRI, which was penalized in 2007 for overmining, because he was using its plane.
According to press reports, SRMI and its sister companies, small-scall miners San R Mining and Galeo Equipment and Mining Corp., were ordered to pay P7 million in penalties for over-extraction in 2007 after they shipped out 1.8 million metric tons of nickel from August 2006 to September 2007. Under the law, small-scale nickel mines may only extract up to 50,000 metric tons of ore per year, or a 150,000-MT combined annual output for the three firms.
In June 2016, President Duterte asked the Bureau of Internal Revenue to check the taxes paid by Gutierrez. At the fellowship dinner of the San Beda College of Law alumni in Malacañang, Duterte said that all businessmen should pay taxes.