Bishop denies mine firm exec’s claim that church leaders back Tampakan copper-gold project
DAVAO CITY––An executive of Sagittarius Mines Inc. claimed that the controversial $5.9 billion (P297 billion) Tampakan project in South Cotabato had gained the support of local religious groups, drawing immediate flak from a Catholic bishop in this city.
Roy Antonio, SMI corporate linkages manager, said in his presentation during the Dec. 9 special session of the South Cotabato provincial council that Southeast Asia’s largest untapped copper-gold minefield in Tampakan had gained the support of local religious groups.
Diocese of Marbel Bishop Cirilo Casicas quickly belied the claim.
“I am the bishop here (South Cotabato), which has an 80 percent Catholic population … How can you claim that you have the support of the religious sector? We have been staunchly opposing the Tampakan project ever since,” the prelate said.
Casicas said the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, the Anglican Church, and the Episcopal Church have joined the diocese in fighting the Tampakan project.
The exchange was aired live Thursday, Dec. 9, on Facebook, when the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of South Cotabato held a special session in Koronadal City to hear petitions to lift the open-pit mining ban that the provincial government imposed since 2010.
Casicas, who spoke after at least five hours of listening to the proceedings, belied the SMI executive’s claim, saying that even on social media, the prevailing sentiment was against the SMI project.
“Vox populi, vox dei (The voice of the people is the voice of God),” the Bishop said, adding that the Tampakan project failed to garner social acceptability.
He challenged the mining company to match the 93,000 signatures gathered by the diocese in a petition that started in August this year, urging the Sangguniang Panlalawigan to stay the open-pit mining ban. The drive gathered 40,000 signatures from the diocese alone.
Antonio was unable to respond to the bishop as the session ran out of time, but during the hearing, he invited the diocese to designate a representative to a multi-partite monitoring body.
Vice Gov. Vicente de Jesus, Sangguniang Panlalawigan presiding officer, scheduled the hearing to resume Monday, Dec. 13.
Antonio also said the mining company would no longer pursue the Tampakan project in “one big production scoop,” as planned, but in a phased approach, saying it would minimize its environmental impact.
He said the company had revised its production plan from “one big production scoop” during the projected 17-year life of the mine to a phased extraction program.
The Tampakan project could generate a yearly average of 375,000 tons of copper and 360,000 ounces of gold within the mine’s lifetime, according to an earlier company study.
Based on the 2010 plan to extract an area of 9,500 hectares, the firm will cover one-fourth of the mines in 10 years, which will constitute Phase 1, when the company expects to yield 15 million tons of deposits. The first three phases would take 30 years, he said.
“If we start big, the impact will be big. But with the phased approach, the impact will be small … The mining footprint will be very much reduced, including its environmental impact,” Antonio said.
Antonio listed down the economic contributions of the Tampakan project even before the venture could go on commercial stream.
He claimed that since 1995, when the government granted the financial or technical assistance agreement (FTAA) for the Tampakan project, the company had already invested P32 billion.
Since 2004, the firm had paid taxes worth at least P2.6 billion, the bulk of which went to the national government, Antonio said.
Once the firm starts operation, it is projected to pay P76.6 billion and P4.8 billion worth of taxes to the national and local governments, respectively, for Phase 1 or the first 10 years alone, Antonio said.
He added that indigenous peoples within the project area would get royalties equivalent to one percent of the gross company earnings, amounting to P6.6 billion in the first 10 years of the project.
The firm’s 25-year FTAA, which expired March 21, 2020, was extended for another 12 years in an order issued June 8, 2016, but made public only in January 2020.
The 12-year extension will allow SMI to operate the mine until 2032, with the possibility of renewal for another 25 years.
In 2017, the late Environment Secretary Gina Lopez canceled the Tampakan project’s environmental compliance certificate (ECC), citing “environmental and social concerns.”
But in July 2020, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau regional office revealed that the Office of the President had restored the ECC as early as May 6, 2019.
