A power revolution in Masbate

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

A power revolution in Masbate
Sunday, 12 04, 2005

Masbate, with its beautiful and pristine beaches and robust marine life hitherto unspoiled by the commercial depradations of man, has a problem: the entire province suffers from brownouts four times a week. Correction: power goes on the blink almost every day. Its power demand can hardly be met by existing power suppliers, who are then by expedience forced to rotate their meager supply among the 21 towns of Masbate every other day.

As a consequence, investors, especially those minded to convert the vast and untapped resources of this island province into revenue-generating industries, are naturally discouraged. This explains why Masbate, despite the efforts of its charismatic and hardworking governor, Antonio Kho, can hardly extricate itself from its perennial classification as a promised land that is teeming with (mere) promises of development.

The redemption of that promise could very well start three months from now, given the resolve of a Ukrainian who, the first time he visited Masbate almost a year ago, fell in love with this province when his gaze fell on the endless abundance of coconut husks and shells which clog the rivers and shorelines of the island. Not a pretty sight, but rather an eyesore actually, one might say. But then, this was not your ordinary Ukranian. Dr. Eugene Sukhin has spent his life looking at what at first glance strikes the eye as offensively ugly mounds of corn cobs in Mexico, piles of organic garbage in Melbourne, and mountains of bamboo scraps in China - and from them saw the potency of power that lay within the biomass of these waste materials!

What now Sukhin intends to do is to power up the entire province of Masbate by converting this plenitude of coconut husks and shells - the island’s seeming ecological waste - into gas which can power turbines that will generate a steady and ample supply of electricity for residential and industrial use.

The man knows whereof he speaks. A former secretary of energy in the Ukraine and one of the leading lights of last year’s Orange Revolution in that country, Sukhin has spent more than 30 years in the gas and oil industry and has occupied several high official positions, including being head of the Ukrainian Oil-Gas Company and Sukhin Special Design Bureau Ltd.. Having been tremendously successful in business and official activities, he now devotes his time to developing and marketing alternative energy solutions. These days, Sukhin can proudly claim ownership of several patented inventions in the field of converting biomass into clean energy. In fact, he is the first in the world who has made this kind of energy production commercially viable. His machine, the RGV2000M, through a gasification process has successfully used the discard wood of the Caucasus mountains and the forests of Belarus, grain wastes of Ukraine, and brown coal of Kazakhstan, and produced energy from them. And what works for wood pulp, grain wastes and brown coal, Sukhin confidently asserts, will equally work for corn cobs, organic garbage, bamboo pellets and shavings – and now, the millions of tons of coconut husks and shells of the Philippines.

Sukhin and his company, hopefully, will finally ink the project that he has been working for with the Philippine National Oil Company and the National Power Corporation. For sure, the project’s fruition has not been an easy climb. It is precisely the prospect of a successful venture such as Sukhin’s in Masbate that prompted the usual “crabs” to try to dislodge the project downhill, forcing Sukhin to re-think his investment priorities. But a local court just recently gave Sukhin a victory that effectively fends off these “crabs” from him, by way of dissolving a writ of preliminary injunction originally foisted against the project. With the writ dissolved, Sukhin may now pursue his project without any hindrance.

Sukhin has had very anxious moments the past six months, when he had to wend his way in the labyrinthine mazes of the Philippine judicial system that is totally alien to him, over several cases that mercilessly tested his resolve to pursue an almost missioner goal in the Philippines of providing energy to an island that needs it most. With encouragement from his loyal assistant Oleksii Pohorielov and Governor Kho, Sukhin was emboldened to wage a tough but determined stand against the kinks in the judicial system. He is now out of that legal maze, and is elated no end, just as he was in the Orange Revolution, that he now holds victory in his hands.

Sukhin can now pursue his dream of bringing power to Masbate. And with power comes people empowerment, especially to those coconut farmers who stand to gain additional incomes from a beneficial use of their otherwise useless coconut waste products. Masbateños should be equally elated at this windfall development for their province.

Through a gesture that borders on philanthropy, and from a foreigner no less, Masbate, when Sukhin’s RGV2000M shall have been put in place and fully operational, shall cease to be “an island, entire of itself.” It shall then become, through the bounties of development, an integral part of the Main and its progress inextricably linked to the rest of the country. Thanks to Dr. Eugene Sukhin and his power (r)evolution in Masbate. It would not be then a mere pipe-dream that before long, the residents and coconut farmers of Masbate could take pride in their island and exclaim as in Sukhin’s native tongue: Ce nasha zemlja, ce nashe pole! (This land is our land, these are our fields!)

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