The US and Israel struck Iran on February 28. The Strait of Hormuz — where roughly 20% of global oil and gas passes — was disrupted. Brent crude surpassed $114 per barrel by March 9. Weeks of consecutive fuel price hikes. The Philippines imports 95 to 98% of its crude, most of it from the Middle East.

Senators were furious. Senator Rodante Marcoleta walked out of the DOE hearing in frustration. The public wanted someone to blame, someone to fix it, someone to just do something.

And then Ramon Ang sat before the Senate on March 26 and offered to sell Petron back to the government. "If the government is interested in purchasing Petron from me, and they feel they can handle its operations more efficiently, then I support that decision."

My gut reaction was immediate. This is a terrible idea.

I am not a free-market ideologue. I don't believe private is always better. But handing the country's only refinery to a government with a 32/100 corruption score and a GOCC sector bleeding hundreds of billions — that is not a solution. That is a new problem.

I didn't want to just run on instinct though. So I went looking for evidence that would prove me wrong.

Here is what I found.

WHAT PETRON ACTUALLY IS

Before the argument, the facts.

Petron is the Philippines' only remaining integrated oil refinery. Its plant in Bataan processes 180,000 barrels per day and supplies roughly one-third of the country's total fuel needs. It is not just a gas station chain. It is the single most critical piece of domestic energy infrastructure this country has.

Under San Miguel Corporation's private ownership, Petron absorbed over P11 billion in losses in 2020 during the pandemic and kept operating — when the easier and cheaper move would have been to shut the refinery and simply import finished fuel, the way other oil companies did.

SMC invested $2 billion in upgrading the Bataan refinery and completed it in 44 months — about 16 months faster than industry standard. In 2025, Petron posted a record net income of P15.6 billion, 84% higher than the year before. Revenue was P810 billion.

This is not a struggling company. This is not a patron-fat GOCC pretending to be a business. This is a functioning private enterprise producing results and carrying real national infrastructure responsibility.

The proposal is to hand that to the government.

THE HISTORY WE NEED TO REMEMBER

Something people forget: we already had this argument. And we already chose an answer.

In 1973, the first Marcos administration directed PNOC to acquire Esso Philippines during the global oil shock, renaming it Petrophil Corporation — what we know today as Petron. In fairness, the intent was not stupid. The country needed a strategic buffer during a genuine crisis. Direct state control of the fuel supply was a defensible call in that moment.

But what followed under government control is less flattering. The Oil Price Stabilization Fund, created by Marcos Sr. in 1984, was meant to smooth price volatility. What it became was a fiscal instrument manipulated across administrations — eventually a symbol of the exact mismanagement it was designed to prevent.

Under President Ramos, the government deliberately chose to privatize Petron. The reasoning was simple: the state-run model was bleeding money, private capital could modernize the company faster, and the proceeds from the sale could fund other priorities.

In 1994, PNOC sold 40% to Saudi Aramco and offered another 20% to the public — dubbed the "mother of all IPOs" at the time. Saudi Aramco paid approximately P14.67 billion for its stake. By 2008, PNOC sold its remaining 40% to the Ashmore Group. Ramon Ang's SMC later acquired control through an agreement with Ashmore.

The IMF's 1994 extended fund facility attached oil deregulation as a conditionality. Whatever you think about IMF conditionalities, the architects of the Ramos privatization understood what government ownership of Petron cost. They lived through it.

The current proposal is to undo that choice. Twice over.

HERE IS THE BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST ME

I owe this section intellectual honesty.

There is a coherent argument for state control of a strategic energy asset. The Philippines is structurally exposed to global oil price shocks in a way that pure market mechanisms cannot fix. The Oil Deregulation Act of 1998, RA 8479, removed the government's authority to impose price controls on petroleum products. When prices spike — especially during a geopolitical crisis the country had no part in creating — the government has no direct lever. It can watch. It can appeal. It cannot compel.

Oil companies under deregulation raise prices fast and lower them slowly. That asymmetry is documented and real. It is not paranoia.

And the argument goes further: if the government owned the refinery, it could prioritize national supply, set pricing protections for consumers during crises, and align capital investment with national energy security goals rather than shareholder returns.

Norway has done exactly this. Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company, is 67% government-owned and is consistently ranked among the best-run energy companies in the world. It works. The evidence is there.

The 1973 takeover of Esso Philippines, in its historical context, worked as an emergency measure. The argument is not without foundation.

I found all of that. I held it. And then I looked at what this government has actually done with the institutions it already controls.

THREE CASE STUDIES AND A NUMBER

For once, the contrarian instinct had receipts.

NAPOCOR is the most direct analogy. A government-run energy company. The most direct predecessor to what a government-controlled Petron would look like.

Before the Electric Power Industry Reform Act — EPIRA — was passed in 2001, NAPOCOR was described bluntly as "the single biggest drain on the Philippine government's finances." Its total debt had grown to over P800 billion by the time the law passed, and ballooned further to P1.2 trillion by 2003. The national government absorbed up to P200 billion of that under Executive Order 370 signed in October 2004.

As of 2023, after more than two decades of restructuring, NAPOCOR is still posting a net deficit of P1.907 billion and losing roughly P1 billion a month due to diesel prices. It needed to borrow P15 billion from Landbank just to keep operating.

Twenty-two years after reform legislation. Still bleeding.

PhilHealth is the second case study. A government-run social institution. What happened to it has a name: institutional capture. And it keeps happening.

PhilHealth Senior Vice President Thorrsson Montes Keith went public in August 2020, exposing P15 billion in funds allegedly pocketed through fraudulent schemes inside the agency. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque stated publicly that at least P100 billion had been lost to corruption. The Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission found not isolated incidents but, in their own words, a "systematic flaw" — a structural defect enabling recurring corruption.

The government directed PhilHealth to transfer P89.9 billion in alleged "excess funds" to the national treasury through a provision buried in the 2024 General Appropriations Act. The Supreme Court unanimously struck it down as unconstitutional in December 2025, ordering the return of the P60 billion already remitted and permanently blocking the remaining P29.9 billion. Fifteen to zero.

NFA is the food equivalent of what a nationalized oil firm could become.

From 2005 to 2018, NFA averaged P11 billion per year in government subsidies. Its net loss was P15.44 billion in 2020. A PIDS policy study found that around half of its subsidized rice in a given year was diverted to commercial markets, where it was sold at market price — defeating the entire purpose.

The Foundation for Economic Freedom said it plainly: "The NFA has only caused and aggravated rice inflation and rice shortage in several regions, compounded the debt and losses of the national government, and provided opportunities for graft and corruption for its officers and employees."

Rice is not oil. But the mechanism is the same.

The sector-wide number is the one that stopped me.

The Governance Commission for GOCCs reported the sector's adjusted net loss grew 516.24% in a single year — from P144.46 billion in 2022 to P890.23 billion in 2023, partly reflecting the adoption of a new insurance accounting standard across PhilHealth, SSS, and GSIS. Even accounting for that, the losses are real and structural. The government's net lending to GOCCs stood at P26.81 billion in 2023.

The Commission on Audit's own budget was cut from P13.7 billion in 2024 to P12.7 billion in 2025 — the one institution with the mandate to check abuses in these agencies now has less capacity to do it. COA reports, observers note, routinely end up "forgotten in the dustbin."

This is the system being proposed to run the country's only refinery.

THIRTY-TWO OUT OF A HUNDRED

I want to be clear about something.

Skepticism about the government's ability to run Petron is not cynicism. It's not partisan. It's not anti-government posturing. It is a reading of publicly available data.

The Philippines' 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index score: 32 out of 100. Rank: 120th out of 182 countries. That is a drop from 2024. The Philippines is the third most corrupt country in Southeast Asia. It sits below the global average of 43 and below the Asia-Pacific regional average of 44.

Singapore scores 84. Japan 71. Vietnam 40. Indonesia 37. The Philippines: 32.

The Maharlika Investment Corporation, floated as a potential buyer of Petron, was co-filed by the President's son and the Speaker of the House. Comparisons to Malaysia's 1MDB were raised immediately by critics — not as rhetorical attacks, but as documented institutional concerns about governance. A Senate investigation into MIC's investment activities was filed in March 2026.

MIC's own CEO, Rafael Consing, said: "Under RSA's leadership, Petron has grown into an exceptionally well-run company, and I firmly believe it belongs in the private sector."

The potential buyer is arguing against the purchase.

THE PEOPLE WHOSE JOB IS TO GET THIS RIGHT

I'm not alone in this instinct, and the people who share it are not ideologues.

Juan Paolo Colet of China Bank Capital Corporation: "A government takeover of Petron is not necessary. The better policy is to allow the company to continue as a well-managed publicly listed corporation, enabling it to serve its customers more effectively." He added that state ownership would create an unfair competitive advantage over other oil companies, could deter new market entrants, and ironically reduce market competition over time.

April Lee-Tan of COL Financial: "The government has a history of poor performance in managing businesses. Moreover, acquiring a stake in Petron's capitalization would put a strain on the national budget. Our current deficit and debt situation isn't robust, especially as we have yet to recover from the pandemic's adverse effects."

These are not bloggers. These are analysts whose job is to get calls like this right and be accountable when they don't.

NORWAY ALMOST CHANGED MY MIND

This is the section where I got closest to being wrong.

Equinor is 67% state-owned. Norway controls a massive share of a global energy company and it functions extraordinarily well — high production, strong returns, transparent governance, consistent international credibility.

How?

The Norwegian government operates on a strictly arm's-length basis. It acts as a shareholder, not a political operator. The board — not the Ministry of Petroleum — is accountable for performance. A code of corporate governance requires equal treatment of all shareholders, board independence, and transparent reporting that no Norwegian minister can override for electoral convenience.

Norway's Corruption Perceptions Index score: above 80.

The Philippines scores 32.

That's the gap. Not in intention. Not in rhetoric about energy security. In the actual institutional architecture that makes state ownership of a critical company something other than a vehicle for contracts, hiring, and election-season price manipulation.

Venezuela's PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.) is the other end of this story. In 2002, Chavez fired the entire PDVSA board after a general strike and replaced senior executives with political allies, gutting decades of technical expertise in one move. Production, which had reached around 3 million barrels per day in the late 1990s, collapsed. Academic research captured the specific mechanism: "When the company surplus increases, the government tends to intensify its control to obtain additional benefits, especially during electoral events."

Venezuela's Corruption Perception Index score today: 10 out of 100.

State ownership of an oil company is not inherently catastrophic. State ownership in a country with a 32/100 corruption score, GOCC losses that exploded 516% in a year, and a sovereign wealth fund co-authored by the president's son — that is where the evidence points toward disaster.

I wanted Norway to prove me wrong. Norway got close.

Our own numbers closed the door.

THERE ARE BETTER ANSWERS THAN THIS

The anger behind the takeover proposal is legitimate. Fuel prices are crushing people. The government handed away its price control tools in 1998 under IMF pressure and has been functionally powerless during price shocks ever since. That is a real problem.

But the solution is not to hand the refinery to the institution running NAPOCOR and PhilHealth.

There are actual alternatives: amend RA 8479 to restore limited emergency pricing tools during declared energy crises without changing ownership structure. Build strategic petroleum reserves — the Philippines currently has roughly a 60-day window, and a prolonged Middle East conflict could exceed that. Mandate real-time price transparency from all oil companies. Suspend excise taxes during declared energy emergencies, which the Marcos administration was already weighing. Strengthen competition enforcement at the infrastructure level — storage, terminals, import ports — where the actual oligopoly concentrates.

None of this requires putting the government in charge of a refinery.

Ang himself, at the same Senate hearing, pledged to cap Petron's corporate margins to avoid exploiting the crisis. That accountability came from public pressure on a private actor. It did not require nationalization. It required an engaged public and a functioning media. We have both.

I TRIED TO FIND A REASON TO SAY YES

I went into this research wanting to find the evidence that would prove me wrong.

I found the strongest version of the counterargument. State ownership of energy assets can work. It worked in 1973, to a point. It works in Norway, comprehensively. The anger driving this proposal is not manufactured — it comes from real families paying real prices they cannot control.

But the evidence I found about this government's institutional capacity, this GOCC sector's track record, this country's corruption score, and the specific pattern of how state enterprises get captured by patronage politics — all of it points in the same direction.

The question was never whether government ownership of an oil company can work in theory. The question is whether this government, with its current record, deserves to be trusted with the country's only refinery.

I tried to find a reason to say yes.

I couldn't.

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