Tabuk City, Kalinga - The tribes of Balatoc, Colayo, Dalupa, Guinaang and Dangtalan in Pasil municipality, this province, have signed separate free and prior informed consent (FPIC) documents and memoranda of agreement (MOAs) for the exploration and possible production of geothermal energy in their ancestral domains in favor of Guidance Management Corporation (GMC) and Aragorn Power and Energy Corporation (APEC), two Makati-based firms.
A source who witnessed the signing which took place during the first and second weeks of October said the councils of elders and leaders signed in behalf of the tribes. Earlier in Tabuk, GMC executive vice president and chief operating officer Salvador San Jose and APEC executive vice president Bernardo Lim signed the MOAs. National Commission on Indigenous Peoples Chairman Eugenio Insigne will also sign the documents in behalf of his agency.
The source said the five tribes hold 14,722 hectares of the 24,939 hectares covered by the Geothermal Service Contract application of the corporate partners with the Department of Energy (DOE). The remaining area is located in the ancestral domains of the Uma tribe in Lubuagan municipality and Dananao, Tulgao, Sumadel, Bangad and Tinglayan tribes in the municipality of Tinglayan.
The source said that the Tulgao tribe has already out-rightly rejected the proposal due to fears that the exploration will affect their water sources while negotiations are still underway for the consent of the other tribes.
The source said that with the signing of the FPICs and the MOAs by the five tribes, the NCIP could now issue the Certificate of Precondition, a condition for the issuance by the DOE of a Geothermal Service Contract which give permission to the applicants to explore and produce in the event the geothermal resources are found viable for commercial production.
The MOAs will be effective within the exploration period which will be five years and renewable for another two years.
The MOAs provide that in the event that the exploration will determine the geothermal resources to be of commercial quantity, the GMC-APEC will have the exclusive right to conduct geothermal operations within the contract areas for 25 years and an additional extension of 18 years.
However, before the start of commercial operations, the parties will execute an addendum to the MOAs to cover the "work and financial obligations of the parties in accordance with the IPRA and other pertinent laws in proportion to the geothermal resources within the area."
The MOAs mandate the two corporations to exercise cultural sensitivity by implementing the project and performing their obligations under the agreement with due consideration to the customs, traditions, values, beliefs and interests and institutions of the tribes.
Also among the obligations of the GMC-APEC embodied in the contract is the funding and implementation of community development projects.
The source said that the five tribes differed in some of the development projects they chose, but common among them are educational scholarships, construction and improvement of roads, construction of school buildings and concreting of irrigation systems.
The MOAs also provide that the GMC-APEC to prioritize members of the tribes in employment except in positions which requires skills not available in the indigenous cultural communities concerned.
Department of Energy geologist Ronald Pendon projected once the project prospers, the plant will be the biggest in the country. **by Estanislao Albano, Jr., Zigzag Weekly, Oct. 14, 2007
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