PCG to hold marine pollution drills with US, Japan, Indonesia in Visayas

FILE PHOTO: The BRP Teresa Magbanua, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) Fleet’s largest vessel deployed at the Kalayaan Island Group. (PHOTO FROM PCG)

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) will conduct a marine pollution exercise in Visayas alone with counterparts in the United States, Japan and Indonesia.

Details are still thin, but PCG spokesperson Rear Admiral Armand Balilo said in an ambush interview on Thursday that it will be held in Bacolod City in the first week of June.

Balilo noted that Bacolod was chosen as the exercise site due to its proximity in areas where oil spills were reported.

In Cebu, which is only a few hundred kilometers away, an oil spill of 500 liters occurred off Naga town after a tugboat sank there in September 2023.

A large-scale oil spill also happened last year.

Around 900,000 liters of industrial fuel oil leaked into the sea following the sinking of MT Princess Empress in Oriental Mindoro last February 28, which reached the areas as far as Palawan and Batangas.