2014 marked the 100th year of Shell in the Philippines. To mark the centennial of this famous gasoline brand in the country, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas released a limited edition of one hundred peso bills bearing in blue ink the company’s logo above the years 1914-2014. The actual logo (a yellow sea shell against a red background) is a familiar sight along many roads in the country today.
The Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation (PSPC) is a part of a bigger international corporate conglomerate. From its institutional advertisements which one can see on international cable television channels, the mother corporation is intent on projecting an image of world corporate responsibility and international corporate citizenship. As a subsidiary, the PSPC is expected to live up to that international image projected by the mother company.
The mother company may be in for a shocking surprise because a local public interest advocate and a civic leader have discovered a very disturbing problem which suggests that all is not well as the PSPC ends its centennial in the country. The documentation is very telling.
Back in 2011, a Shell gasoline station located in San Juan City, Metropolitan Manila announced that it was going to be open for business soon. Later on, plans in that regard had to be aborted because it was discovered that there were serious problems regarding its permits, and that the gasoline station itself does not comply with the mandatory provisions of law governing the safety of gasoline stations.
What are these requirements?
The proprietor of a new gasoline station must apply for a development permit and a building permit to be issued by the city government. A clearance from the barangay where the gasoline station will be constructed is also a requirement. Under the law, both the city government and the barangay must conduct their own separate inspection of the site and ascertain compliance with the law on the part of the applicant before the said permits may be issued. No construction on the proposed site of the gasoline station may be undertaken prior to the issuance of these permits.
Once the gasoline station is constructed, an electrical permit must be secured from city hall. Prior to its issuance, the city government must check if the electrical system to be used in the gasoline station complies with safety standards. The gasoline station must have a fire lane (an area which must be vacant at all times for emergency use by a fire engine in case of fire) and at least two means of ingress and egress. Under current rules, a common entrance and exit are not enough. That is why modern gasoline stations, especially those on the expressways, have very wide entrances and exits, or are constructed at corner lots.
It appears that the legal and safety rules were breached.
First, the person who signed the application purports to be the president of Shell Philippines when in fact he is not. This is already a violation of the law.
Next, the barangay clearance, which was signed by a barangay captain who shares the name of a legendary politician, has a lot of discrepancies. While the application and the barangay clearance indicate that the gasoline station will be built on a corner lot, that corner lot is actually occupied, and remains occupied up this writing, by a commercial building. From all indications, therefore, the barangay captain did not bother to investigate the information supplied in the application before he signed and issued the barangay clearance. This is a violation of Republic Act No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Third, no development permit and building permit had been issued for the construction of the gasoline station. Instead of the requisite building permit, what was obtained was a renovation permit. A renovation permit is required when the applicant wants to repair or renovate an existing building. On the other hand, a building permit is required when the applicant wants to undertake an entirely new construction. The cost of either permit depends on how large the actual land area is. However, the building permit costs far more, on a per-square meter basis, than the renovation permit does.
Considering that what was obtained was a renovation permit instead of the requisite building permit, the requirement of the law was violated. Not only that, since the renovation permit costs less than the building permit, the local government was unduly deprived of the correct revenue under a business permit, estimated to be in substantially valuable. This circumvention of the law gives rise to criminal liability, too.
Since the gasoline station can store an estimated 80,000 liters of highly combustible fuel, an electrical malfunction in the station can produce sparks and may trigger a holocaust. So far, no electrical permit seems to have been issued by the local government. Moreover, the gasoline station has no fire lane, and the means to enter and leave it are not wide enough to meet safety standards fixed by the Bureau of Fire Protection.
The area where the gasoline station is constructed was originally classified as a residential zone, until the city government of San Juan enacted a new ordinance re-classifying it as a commercial zone. Under the law, local government re-zoning measures must be approved by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) before the reclassification may legally take effect. So far, the available copies of the ordinance do not bear any approval of the HLURB.
Last, the proposed gasoline station is not really needed in the area because it is surrounded by at least four competing gasoline stations—Petron, Caltex, Total and Shell—located within meters from each other on the same street. The Petron, Caltex and Shell stations are constructed on corner lots and have been around for quite some time. Continued on Tuesday