UK – China - Philippines will start Natural Gas Exploration in Mindoro

A consortium of five foreign firms will start drilling natural gas in the southern part of Mindoro Island in the second quarter of next year, the Department of Energy said.

Huge oil and gas seeps were indicated on Mindoro Island adjacent to the Palawan Basin, which hosts all the producing oil and gas wells in the Philippines.

Drilling is scheduled at Roxas, Mansalay, and Bulalacao, in Oriental Mindoro, and Magsaysay, San Jose, and Sablayan, in Occidental Mindoro.

"Operations will begin shortly," according to the United Kingdom-based Pitkin Petroleum (Philippines) Plc, main operator of Service Contract 53, which was approved by the DoE on July 8, 2005 in favor of a consortium of Pitkin, Resource Management Association (Hongkong) Ltd., The Philodrill Corp., Anglo-Philippine Holdings Corp., and Basic Energy Corp.

DoE Undersecretary Jose Layug was please over the prospects in Mindoro.

"The service contract area coverage is 724,000 hectares," he said. "The exploration period covers  seven years (started in 2005) with different sub-phases."

Pitkin Petroleum said "numerous onshore oil and gas seeps plus two gas discoveries are located in the contract area and more than 15 prospective structures with individual areas of closure of between seven and 65 square kilometers have been identified from previous work."

The firm has a participating interest of 70 percent in the block, with the remaining 30 percent held by the Philodrill Corp. Basic Consolidated Inc. and Anglo-Philippine Holdings Corp.

Oriental Mindoro Congressman Rodolfo Valencia welcomed the move "considering the fact that it will bring economic boom to our province."

He said the National Grid and Transmission Corporation has approved the Batangas-Mindoro Submarine Interconnection Project worth ₱11 billion.

The underwater link aims to convey surplus electric power from Mindoro Grid to Luzon.

Layug said the agency is not only focusing its exploration works on the traditional energy sources, such as oil and gas, in Mindoro Island, but also on renewable sources of energy, such as geothermal, wind, and hydro power.

Last March, this year, President Benigno Aquino  III led the switch-on ceremony of the island's first hydro-power plant in Bgy. Linaw-Kawayan, in San Teodoro municipality.

Now operational, the mini-hydro, with a construction cost of ₱405 million borrowed from the Development Bank of the Philippines, is capable of producing 4.5 megawatts of electricity.

The groundbreaking and construction of the country's second wind power projects, the province's second renewable energy project, was undertaken last September 7.

Situated on a 1,296-hectare mountain village overlooking  the scenic beach resorts of the Verde Island Passage, the three-48-mw wind farm costs PhP6-billion.

The construction of the first phase, capable of generating 16 megawatts of electricity and costing P2 billion, will last in two years in 2014.

The first operating wind farm facility is in Bangui, Ilocos Norte, with 20 units of wind mills capable of generating 33 megawatts of electricity. Each unit stands 70-meter high, and blade diameter of 41 meters each.

The Bangui wind farm was originally designed to only produce clean electricity without emitting carbon, people call them as "giant electric fans" that have become a major tourist destination in Northern Luzon.

The Puerto Galera wind project is a component of the Power Development Program of Oriental Mindoro supported by the Provincial Development Council (PDC).

Manila Standard Today

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CEMEX to Invest for $65 Million USD Cement Production Capacity Expansion in Philippines

CEMEX, a Mexican building materials company offering superior quality products and reliable service all across the world, has reported that it will invest roughly $65 million to increase its cement production capacity in the Philippines and reinforce its distribution network in order to provide better services in high-demand regions across the country.

Through this investment, CEMEX will increase its APO facility's annual cement production capacity by 1.5 million metric tons. The capacity expansion is slated for operation by Q1 of fiscal 2014.

This new investment enables CEMEX to maintain pace with the rapidly growing Philippines market. The National Statistical Coordination Board reported that the country recorded 6.1% growth in gross domestic product during the first half of fiscal 2012. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority has started several infrastructure projects as the nation recuperates from damage created by adverse weather conditions.

Worldwide, CEMEX is continuously adapting its operations to maintain pace with swiftly changing market scenario. In up-and-coming economies such as the Philippines, the building materials company is making investments to exploit the ever-increasing requirement for building materials.

CEMEX's Country President in the Philippines, Pedro Palomino stated that infrastructure development is one of the imperative needs of the country and hence, it has to be given top priority. The company is happy to play a role in the development of the Philippines and wants to serve as a long-term partner on its efforts towards a prosperous, sustainable future.

Source: http://www.cemex.com/

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Filipino nurses win Tagalog language discrimination settlement in California Hospital

Nurse Wilma Lamug is overcome with emotion as she recounts the discrimination she and other Filipino nurses experienced while working at the Delano Regional Medical Center in Delano, Calif. (Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times)

At $975,000, it's believed to be the largest language discrimination settlement in the U.S. healthcare industry. Officials at Delano Regional Medical Center say they did nothing wrong and settled only because it made financial sense

A group of Filipino nurses who claimed they were mocked for their accents and ordered to speak "English only" won a nearly $1-million settlement against a Central California hospital where bosses and co-workers were allegedly urged to eavesdrop on the immigrant workers.

The $975,000 settlement, announced Monday by lawyers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is believed to be the largest language discrimination settlement in the U.S. healthcare industry, according to the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

Officials at Delano Regional Medical Center insisted they did nothing wrong and settled the lawsuit only because it made financial sense. Under the terms of the settlement, however, the hospital must conduct anti-discrimination training and hire a monitor to track workplace conduct.

The case, filed in 2010, involved 69 immigrants who said they suffered "constant harassment and humiliation when they opened their mouths, or talked with family members on the phone," said Anna Park, a Los Angeles-based attorney for the commission. She said nurses were banned from speaking Tagalog and other dialects in break rooms, hallways and the cafeteria.

"They were always telling us, 'Ssshhh. English only. English only. I felt embarrassed, ashamed," said Elnora Cayme, who worked at the hospital for more than 27 years.

"I was so angry we were being followed by housekeepers and security guards," she said. "I asked the guard why he did that and he said, 'We were told to watch you and report you.'"

During a 2006 mandatory meeting for Filipino staffers, nurses were told they were forbidden from using their native language at "any time in the hospital," said Wilma Lamug, a former 10-year employee.

She said the hospital's former chief executive vowed that "he would install surveillance cameras in nursing stations. Whoever is caught, they were threatened with suspension or termination," Lamug said. "Sometimes, we were speaking English, but due to our accent and diction, they thought we were speaking something else."

Although the hospital, near Bakersfield, employed a mix of bilingual employees speaking Spanish, Hindi, Bengali and other languages, managers targeted only the Filipinos and encouraged supervisors and other staffers to "act as vigilantes."

The language policy created such a hostile work environment that one worker even sprayed air freshener on a Filipino employee's lunch to register her "hatred for Filipino food," Park said.

Hurt, Lamug and others drafted a petition and collected more than 100 signatures, sending it to management to express their shock. Park said it did not change the atmosphere "of intimidation." The lawsuit alleged that the hospital's language policy violated the Civil Rights Act.

Hospital administrators denied wrongdoing, according to a statement released Monday, saying it "made no financial sense for the hospital to continue this lawsuit and further waste valuable assets which could be better spent on the community's healthcare needs."

The nurses' lawsuit was "an attack" on Delano's policy requiring the use of either English or the patient's preferred language while providing patient care.

The hospital "has the same policy with the same goals — protection of patients," said John Szewczyk, Delano's attorney.

The settlement calls for administrators to conduct regular staff training on diversity and to enforce reporting and handling of discrimination complaints. An outside monitor will be hired to review Delano's compliance for three years, said Laboni Hoq, litigation director at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

"We feel we restored our dignity — but there's no closure," said Hilda Ducusin, a staff nurse for 10 years. "The scar is always there."

Los Angeles Times

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