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Philippines' Aquino says miners will have to pay
by Staff Writers
Manila (AFP) March 20, 2012


The Philippine government intends to impose far heavier taxes and tougher environmental restrictions on the mining industry, President Benigno Aquino said Tuesday

Aquino told AFP in an interview a review of the country's mining policies was close to being finished, and the government would likely require all mining companies to start paying the government a "hefty" percentage of revenues.

Aquino said the government currently only received a two-percent excise tax.

"We are now reviewing what is fair... we get two percent of the profit and 100 percent of the risks. That doesn't seem fair," he said.

Aquino said the government was looking at efforts by the Australian government to generate more money from the mining sector, where a 30-percent tax on extraordinary profits of coal and ore producers will start in July.

He said a 50-50 revenue sharing agreement was even being considered, although he emphasised the policy had not been finalised and refused to signal what percentage the government was hoping for other than a "fair share".

The Philippines is believed to have some of the biggest mineral reserves in the world -- the government estimates the country has at least $840 billion in gold, copper, nickel, chromite, manganese, silver and iron.

However the minerals have been largely untapped, partly because of a strong anti-mining movement led by the influential Catholic Church, while poor infrastructure and security concerns have also kept investors away.

Aquino said the new mining policy would aim to regulate the industry much more closely and give certainty to investors.

But he signalled the government was not desperate to cash in on the global commodities boom, pointing out the mining sector played only a small role in the nation's economy and created many environmental risks.

"They (miners) claim they contribute quite a big amount to the national economy but at the end of the day it's really just two percent," he said.

Aquino also indicated tourism was a much higher economic priority for the government than mining, which he said generally created only short-term economic benefits.

He said the government was aiming to attract 10 million tourists annually by 2016, up from four million currently, and that each visitor generated one job domestically.

"If we get 10 million tourists, we get 10 million new jobs... this is sustainable. We can count on that year in, year out," he said.

"(But) once all of those minerals are extracted, that's it. So if we go into gaining these resources on a temporary basis, we might be sacrificing the long-term opportunities for our future."

Aquino said, under the new policy, mining would be banned completely from 78 sites deemed important to tourism, while other environmental restrictions would be imposed.

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Chevron blamed in Brazil oil spill: report
Brasilia (AFP) March 20, 2012 - A huge oil spill off Brazil's southern coast was the result of excessive pressure used by oil giant Chevron in drilling the sea floor, according to a report by police and prosecutors published by local media Tuesday.

The O Globo newspaper quoted Fabio Scliar, head of the environment unit of Brazil's federal police department, as saying that the deep water well "could not and should not have been drilled under the conditions presented in the area," adding that an "absurd" amount of pressure was used at the site situated off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state.

"All indications are that a desire for profits led (Chevron) to take the prohibitive risk" of drilling at the site, Scliar concluded in the document, according to O Globo.

Brazil's National Petroleum Agency (ANP), the country's national oil regulator, has estimated that some 2,400 barrels of crude were spilled at the site.

Following last year's huge spill in the Frade Field area off Rio de Janeiro state, Brazilian authorities suspended all of Chevron's drilling operations and denied it access to huge new offshore fields, which ANP says have reserves that could surpass 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil.

The investigation attributed a smaller spill at the site last week to the same cause.

Prosecutors also have announced legal action against Chevron, its Brazilian unit and oil drilling contractor Transocean, seeking $11 billion over the November spill.

So far, Chevron has been fined $33 million and been barred from new exploration operations.



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FROTH AND BUBBLE
Chevron accused of graft in Indonesian green project
Jakarta (AFP) March 17, 2012
Indonesia on Saturday accused five Chevron employees of being involved in a scam to set up a fictitious green project that lost the state some $270 million, a charge denied by the US oil giant. "The Attorney-General's Office (AGO) has named seven suspects, five of whom are from Chevron," the office said in a statement on its website. "Provisional estimates show losses of around $270 mill ... read more


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