West Tower residents sue FPIC anew

West Tower residents on Tuesday sued for criminal negligence officials of the Lopez-owned First Philippine Industrial Corp. (FPIC), First Gen Corp. which manages FPIC and oil companies Pilipinas Shell and Chevron Philippines in connection with last year’s oil leak which led to the closure of the 22-story condominium in Barangay Bangkal, Makati City.

“We sought a ‘writ of kalikasan’ from the Supreme Court and it was granted. We’ve filed for damages and yet it seems FPIC isn’t listening to us,” the residents’ lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, told reporters. “Maybe with this case, they’ll start to listen to us.”

In a complaint they filed with the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office, the residents said the companies’ officials should be held “criminally liable [because … they] were so negligent in maintaining the pipeline.”

They added, “To maintain [the pipeline’s] integrity and suitability, it is industry practice to conduct routine maintenance checks and, if needed, repair work or rehabilitation work … since it has been in use for [the past] 44 years …”

The respondents were referring to FPIC’s 117-kilometer-long pipeline, a portion of which is located near West Tower.

Used to transport fuel products in Batangas province to the Pandacan oil depot in Manila, it was found to be the source of the oil that started leaking into the basement of the condominium in July last year.

Fearful for the safety of residents, Makati officials ordered the closure of the building as unit owners asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of kalikasan, a petition which was granted in November.

The court also ordered FPIC to shut down the pipeline indefinitely and conduct a cleanup of the West Tower basement and surrounding areas in Barangay Bangkal.

The residents said in their petition that when the oil leak was first discovered, FPIC and First Gen officials did not order the conduct of a structural integrity test on the pipeline while the inspections they conducted were not extensive and thorough enough, [allowing the situation] “to become worse.”

As for the two oil firms, reports about the leak “should have raised a red flag that should have prompted [their officials] … to check whether it was their fuel that was being spilled in a residential area,” they added.

According to the residents, the officials of the four companies were to blame for making West Tower “uninhabitable….”

Sought for comment, FPIC president Anthony Mabasa said that it was not true that they did not conduct an immediate investigation into the source of the leak after it was first reported.

“We dug in front of West Tower and [other areas], only we did not find the source of leak,” he told the Inquirer on the phone. “We found the source of the leak about 200 meters upstream.”

He also lamented the filing of another suit against their company which, according to him, would “undermine the good faith discussions the company has [conducted] with some residents.”

Officials of Shell and Chevron, meanwhile, declined to comment on the matter.