Posted on 01/14/2024 5:55:05 PM PST by texas booster
The United States Embassy in Manila confirmed on Thursday that a fuel shipment is being transported from a US military facility in Hawaii to be stored in a “commercial storage facility” at Subic Bay.
US Embassy spokesperson Kanishka Gangopadhyay told reporters that the delivery was made through proper channels, using established logistics contracts with Philippine commercial entities.
“We can confirm that the Yosemite Trader, a commercial tanker, is currently in the vicinity of Subic Bay, Philippines in order to transfer clean fuel from the US military facility at Red Hill, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to a commercial storage facility at Subic Bay,” he said.
“This is one of multiple shipments of safe, clean fuel from the Red Hill facility to other locations in the Pacific,” he added.
Gangopadhyay added that this was also one of the “many regular shipments of fuel” to the Philippines, made through existing logistics contracts in the Philippines.
The embassy official, however, declined to comment about the future use of said fuel shipment.
“Unfortunately, I can’t speak to future use. I can say that we regularly ship fuel to Subic Bay and various other locations in the region,” he told the PNA.
The clarification came after Senator Imee Marcos called out the "39 million gallons of fuel” being shipped by US Navy from Pearl Harbor to Subic.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, earlier said the "inexplicable silence" of both the Philippine and US governments about the delivery raises “suspicions about the pre-positioning of military supplies in the country amid predictions of an eventual war between China and the US over Taiwan”.
Regular transaction
The Department of National Defense (DND) also confirmed that the fuel shipment from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to Subic Bay in the Philippines is just a regular transaction.
"The shipment of fuel from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA to a storage facility in the Subic Bay Freeport in the Philippines via the commercial tanker Yosemite Trader is part of regular commercial transactions between the US government and Philippine companies," DND spokesperson Arsenio Andolong said in a statement Thursday.
No other details of the shipment are available.
Nothing to explain
Meanwhile, Armed Forces of the Philippines(AFP) spokesperson Col. Medel Aguilar said the military has nothing to explain regarding the issue.
“There is nothing for the AFP to explain. The fuel shipment and the process the US followed, which are all administrative in nature, did not involve the participation of the AFP," he added.
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT: A commercial tanker that was supposed to transfer 39 million gallons of fuel from a United States military facility to a commercial storage here has cancelled its application for entry, an official of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) said on Thursday (Jan 11).
Armie Llamas, officer in charge of the SBMA’s office of the deputy administrator for corporate communications, said the tanker Yosemite Trader had canceled its request for a port call, based on information coming from the agency’s seaport department.
Llamas did not say the reason for the cancellation, but the disclosure came a day after Sen. Imee Marcos issued a statement questioning the apparent lack of transparency about the shipment, particularly on the part of the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, since it involves dealings with the US military.
Marcos, the elder sister of the President and chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations, called out the DND and AFP for their “inexplicable silence” on the matter, asking whether they were using the Mutual Defence Treaty as “a license” to keep it under wraps.
Subic Bay, she added, is also not among the bases that the US military can use to preposition forces or equipment under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca).
Llamas said the SBMA earlier received a communication from the US Navy on Tuesday for the planned fuel transfer in Subic, a former US naval base. She did not elaborate.
Also on Thursday, the US Embassy in Manila confirmed that the commercial tanker was already in the vicinity of Subic Bay to transfer its cargo of fuel that came from the US military facility at Red Hill, Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii.
The Yosemite Trader was carrying “safe, clean fuel” and arrangements for the cargo’s transfer and storage in Subic were done through “proper channels,” according to a statement issued by the embassy’s spokesperson, Kanishka Gangopadhyay.
In a message to the Inquirer, Gangopadhyay also said the fuel “has not been sold or donated to the Philippine government” but that he “can’t speak [on] the future use of this fuel.”
“All arrangements for the transfer and storage of this fuel were made through the proper channels, using established logistics contracts with Philippine commercial entities,” Gangopadhyay said in his statement.
The embassy also explained that it was just “one of multiple shipments’’ of fuel from Pearl Harbor to other locations in the Indo-Pacific region.
Addressing the questions raised by Marcos, the DND said the fuel shipment was “part of regular commercial transactions between the US Government and Philippine companies.”
The AFP, on the other hand, maintained it had “nothing to explain on the fuel shipment.”
“The process that was followed by the US government, these are all administrative in nature and did not involve the participation of the armed forces,” AFP spokesperson Col. Medel Aguilar told reporters.
In March 2022, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III ordered the defueling and closure of the Red Hill storage facility following a jet fuel leak that affected thousands of residents near the air base.
At the time, Austin said the millions of gallons of fuel will be redistributed across the Indo-Pacific and “will better position the United States to meet future challenges in the region.”
The closure “will better support our operations in the Pacific theater, while caring for the health and safety of the people of Hawaii and our military families,” he said.
Before the cancellation was disclosed by the SBMA, the fuel shipments from the Red Hill storage facility were already drawing protests from local and international civil society groups.
The US-based advocacy group Hawai’i Justice and Peace said the US Navy had “repeatedly lied to the people of Hawaii, including military families, about the safety of the drinking water” sourced from a major aquifer located only a hundred feet away from Red Hill.
“The military did not admit to the fuel leak until people who lived nearby reported smelling fuel in their water,” the group said. “This endangered the lives of 93,000 people, and the impact continues to be felt to this day. Now, millions of [taxpayer] money are spent on decommissioning the Red Hill military storage facility.”
Among Filipino groups, Stop the War Coalition Philippines said it would demand answers from the government should it allow the fuel transfer.
“Aside from health and environmental repercussions, the security risk is posed by who will ultimately use it, what they will use it for, and who will be responsible for securing it,” the coalition said on Thursday. “We are talking about massive amounts of dangerous, combustible substances. We demand answers, accountability and transparency in this matter that will impact the public.” — Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
Right hand, meet left hand.
Does the Biden administration have a clue how sensitive some of our “partners” are about military matters? The Philip[pines has a large fifth column sponsored by China that will protest if they can find anything to complain about.
If you are going to distribute fuel, then do it.
If not, don’t even start the trip.
This should have been addressed behind closed doors.
We need to position ourselves for eventualities we wish
would come to place, but we have to do it.
This guy is not using any common sense airing this in
front of China and its buds.
I’d like to see him lose a position or two over it.
It is probably being put in place for China to use. Dangled, so they can “steal it” easily. The current power structure in the US is dead set on destroying this country. You know it in your minds, it is time to tell your entire self that it is so.
I wouldn’t doubt it all the way...
And this would mean they plan on doing it before next
January.
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