The 2026 U.S.-Iran War and the Global Energy Crisis

Chapter 16: Empty Manila

16.1 A Country Dependent on the Middle East for 98% of Oil Imports

On March 20, 2026, at a gas station on Kalayaan Avenue in Quezon City, Manila. An attendant was tearing off black tape to change the numbers on the price sign. Diesel, which had been 89 pesos per liter yesterday, was 105 pesos today. No one knew what it would be tomorrow. A dozen motorcycles and jeepneys were lined up in front of the gas station, and behind them, a handwritten sign taped to the wall read "Gas limit: 20 liters per person."

The Philippines is an archipelago nation composed of 7,641 islands. The ferries and Ro-Ro cargo ships that connect the islands, the diesel generators that supply electricity to island and remote areas, and the jeepneys and tricycles that transport the massive population of Metro Manila all run on fossil fuels. Yet the Philippines produces almost no commercially viable crude oil within its own borders. The Malampaya offshore gas field, which had partially met domestic demand, was entering depletion. The country depends on imports for 98% of the oil it consumes.

More fatal than that was the source of the imports. According to the Philippine Department of Energy's 2024 Energy Statistics Report, over 95% of the crude oil the Philippines imports comes from the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia accounted for more than half, followed by the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. The only facility where the Philippines can directly refine oil is the Petron refinery on the Bataan Peninsula, which meets only 40% of domestic demand. The remaining 60% is purchased as refined products,gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,from Asia's refining hubs: Singapore, South Korea, and China. Yet most of the crude oil these Asian countries refine passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Whether directly or indirectly, the Philippines was completely exposed to the geopolitical risks of the Middle East.

The Philippines lacked the financial and infrastructural resources to store months of strategic petroleum reserves like the United States or Japan did, buried in underground rock formations or stored in massive tanks. The Oil Deregulation Law, enacted in 1998, had transferred the responsibility for reserves to private refineries, and not a drop of government-level strategic reserves existed. The Philippines' energy security depended entirely on the 15-to-30-day commercial inventory that private companies were required to maintain.

The Strait of Hormuz was sealed. After insurance for tankers vanished and AIS signals went dark, the crisis the Philippines faced was not "price increases" but "physical depletion." More money could not buy oil. Neighboring Asian countries were turning to national-priority policies and shutting off refined product exports.

And this country was losing another artery besides oil. The Middle East was home to 2.4 million overseas Filipino workers (OFW), another key pillar of the Philippine economy. In Saudi Arabia: 813,000; in the United Arab Emirates: 975,000; in Qatar: 250,000. The remittances they sent home each month accounted for roughly 10% of Philippine GDP. When war broke out, airports throughout the Middle East shut down one by one, and the Philippine government had to evacuate its citizens trembling with fear of bombing before worrying about oil supply disruptions. Just after the war began, Hans Cacdac, secretary of the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), told reporters at a press conference, "This is not yet a large-scale evacuation, since we have not reached alert level 4, but eighty people in Dubai have requested repatriation." By March 14, the government had brought 1,315 Filipinos from the Middle East back to their homeland. It chartered entire flights and transported people from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Many of them could only board the plane after driving overland for hours to reach a safe departure point.

Oil was cut off, remittances were shrinking, and family members were trapped in a war zone. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz severed both the physical energy that moved the Philippines and the financial energy that sustained its economy. The Philippines was the first and loudest country in Asia to cry out in agony.

16.2 From "This is not a crisis" to "State of National Emergency"

Monday, March 23, 2026, at Malacañang Palace. Presidential Spokesman Claire Castro told reporters at a regular briefing that the Philippines was not in "a state of crisis" but rather in a state of "price disruption." Energy Secretary Sharon Garin shared that position. With 45 days of inventory remaining and alternative supply lines being secured, she tried to persuade the public that panic buying was unnecessary.

Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of Tuesday, March 24, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order 110 at Malacañang. Declaration of a State of National Energy Emergency. Effective for one year. The Philippines became the first country in the world to declare an energy emergency in response to the Iran war. The government, which had insisted just yesterday that "this is not a crisis," surrendered a day later.

With the emergency declaration, a joint committee, UPLIFT (Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food, and Transport), headed by the president, was activated. Secretaries from the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Social Welfare, Agriculture, Finance, Budget and Management, and Socioeconomic Planning all participated in this whole-of-government response system. The emergency declaration gave the government emergency procurement authority for fuel and petroleum products, authority to crack down on hoarding and price gouging, and authority to implement energy rationing plans. PNOC (Philippine National Oil Company) and its subsidiary PNOC-EC were given authority to bypass bidding procedures and undertake emergency purchases.

Behind this dramatic reversal were numbers revealed in a Senate hearing. The Energy Department reported the inventory situation as follows. Petroleum reserves that had been 55 to 57 days at the start of the war had dropped to 45 days as of March 20. Jet fuel: 38 days. LPG, essential for cooking and restaurant operations for ordinary people: 23 days. And with the Strait of Hormuz blocked, these numbers could only decline; there was no prospect of them being replenished.

Senator Loren Legarda poured out her anger at the Energy Department during the hearing. Neighboring countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia had built up strategic reserves in normal times, but the Philippine government was fumbling to buy emergency quantities at double the normal price after the crisis broke. The Budget and Management Department (DBM) approved an emergency purchase budget of 20 billion pesos (approximately 406 million dollars). The money came from the Malampaya Gas Field Fund. The plan was to buy 2 million barrels of diesel with this money, but with the global market in panic, there were no ships available to immediately transport the oil even with the money.

Petron called a tanker, the Sara Sky, loaded with 750,000 barrels (100,000 tons) of ESPO blend crude from Russia to the Bataan refinery. This was thanks to a sanctions exemption the United States issued, valid through April 11. It was the first moment in five years, since the war began, that Russian crude oil was entering the Philippines. In a Bloomberg interview, the Energy Secretary said, "We are consulting with the United States. We are reviewing all options, whether Iranian oil, Venezuelan oil, all of it." The war of an ally had cut off the Philippines' energy, and the Philippines was buying oil from the enemy of that ally.

Senator Imee Marcos, the sister of President Marcos, directly criticized the government's response. "Doling out paltry relief amounts is a band-aid. What is needed is a realistic and comprehensive strategic plan for the survival of every Filipino." Senator Bam Aquino argued that the government needed to declare not just an energy emergency but a national emergency in order to have real authority to control prices and respond to the crisis. Renato Reyes Jr., from the progressive citizens' group Bayan, spoke more sharply. "The emergency declaration mentions no suspension of taxes, no price controls, and no repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law of 1998. This is a declaration that avoids the fundamental problems."

The Lowy Institute, analyzing this situation, summed it up in one sentence. The Philippine Department of Energy's own statistical reports had documented with nearly mathematical precision what would happen if the Strait of Hormuz were blockaded. Policymakers had the data. They had the numbers. What they lacked was the urgency to act according to those numbers.

16.3 The Vanished Traffic Jam

Nicolas Torre III, director of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), announced figures at a press conference on March 24. Traffic volume on EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) had decreased by 5 to 8%. On a road where an average of 407,342 vehicles passed daily in 2023, 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles had disappeared. Director Torre explained, "After the oil price increase, more people are not driving their vehicles, some have switched to carpooling, and some have shifted to public transportation."

In numbers, it is 5 to 8%. But anyone who knows Manila's roads understands what this means. EDSA is a 23.8-kilometer, 10-lane highway that becomes a giant parking lot during rush hour. Exhaust, car horns, vehicles jammed together trying to go first. Manila rarely drops out of the rankings for the world's worst traffic congestion. That road was noticeably empty.

An Al Jazeera photographer captured rush hour on EDSA on March 26. The article title was "Manila's streets empty." On a digital billboard was the phrase "Pray for the Middle East," and beneath it passed only a few vehicles. It was the first sight of this kind since the strict lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Yet the silence then and the silence now were fundamentally different. During COVID, the silence was the isolation of people who locked their own doors to escape the virus. Now it was the paralysis of silence when people had no means to leave even if they wanted to go out to earn money.

The first to stop were the jeepneys. After World War II ended, Filipinos took the military jeeps the Americans left behind and converted them into minibuses,that is the origin of the jeepney. It is Metro Manila's cheapest form of public transportation and the lifeblood of a subsistence-level working-class economy. Base fare: 13 pesos. As diesel prices soared from over 100 pesos per liter to 120, then 130 pesos, the math fell apart. A jeepney consumes an average of 30 liters of diesel per day. Thirty liters multiplied by 130 pesos meant a daily fuel cost of 3,900 pesos. Yet the money drivers earned running the vehicle all day was 300 to 400 pesos. The more they drove, the more they fell into debt.

On March 19, the National Union of Transport Workers, PISTON (Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide), launched a nationwide transportation strike. PISTON Chairman Mody Floranda laid out the demands. Immediately abolish the value-added tax and excise tax on petroleum products. Bring the fuel price back down to 55 pesos per liter. Repeal the 1998 Oil Deregulation Law. PISTON reported that 70,000 people participated in the strike nationwide. Fifteen to twenty strike locations emerged in Metro Manila alone, and transportation halted simultaneously across Cebu, Iloilo, Pasig, and Bulacan.

Fifty-two-year-old jeepney driver Arturo Modelo told Al Jazeera, "Normally I earned 600 pesos (about 10 dollars) a day, but now I make only a third of that. I can't even give my kids lunch money." He explained his reason for participating in the strike this way. "An unresponsive government only hears when you do this. Anyway, there's no way to make a living on the road these days."

A second strike occurred from March 26 to 27. This time, not just jeepney drivers but also bus drivers, UV express operators, motorcycle taxi drivers, and transport network vehicle service (TNVS) drivers,over 20 transport groups united. It was called the "No to Oil Price Hike Coalition." On Friday, March 27, thousands marched to Malacañang. Among the protesters, some waved the Iranian flag. Jerome Adonis, chairman of the national labor federation Kilusang Mayo Uno (May 1 Movement), said, "Filipinos did not start this war, and we do not want to be part of it. Yet we are suffering because of it. It is as if the United States dropped bombs on us too."

When public transportation stopped, the impact spread throughout the entire city. Several universities in Manila switched to online classes. Ateneo de Manila University instructed students having difficulty attending campus due to transportation issues to inform their professors. Philippine Polytechnic University (PUP) switched to full online classes from March 26 to April 1. The stated reason was to prepare for Holy Week travel, but the real reason was that students had no transportation to reach school.

The government tried to put out the immediate fire by doling out subsidies. Emergency cash assistance of 5,000 pesos (about 83 dollars) per person to motorcycle taxi drivers and transport workers. Free bus service with a 1 billion peso budget from the Department of Transportation. Discounted fares on MRT3 and LRT2 subway lines. Highway toll reductions. Yet 5,000 pesos covered barely two days of fuel costs. PISTON countered, "This is not enough. None of these measures touch the fundamental structural problems of the petroleum industry."

The empty EDSA was the most visual evidence that Manila's economy was shutting down. The disappearance of traffic congestion from the world's most congested city did not mean the traffic problem had been solved,it meant people had become unable to move. Residents in this city, thousands of kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz, were learning with their bodies that when a narrow 21-mile waterway closes, even the jeepneys on their own neighborhood streets come to a stop.

16.4 A Wednesday at Baclaran Church

In 2026, Holy Week (Semana Santa) ran from March 28 to April 5. For this country where more than 80% of the population is Catholic, Holy Week is the year's largest and most sacred holiday. In normal times, it is the week of a massive population migration when half the Metro Manila population boards buses and ships to the terminals to head home to the provinces.

Yet the results the MMDA observed shortly before Holy Week showed this. Passenger numbers at terminals and major thoroughfares were noticeably lower than in previous years. Edison Nebrija, MMDA Traffic Management chief, appeared on a broadcast and said, "Normally by Friday around this time, passengers overflow the terminals and you can already see the exodus on EDSA. But there aren't as many as in previous years."

Father Jerome Secillano, head of the public affairs office of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), admitted in a radio interview that the fuel crisis might affect Visita Iglesia, a Filipino Catholic tradition of visiting seven churches during Holy Week. "If the church only worried about declining attendance, it would be selfish. What we worry about is that the oil price hike is snowballing across every aspect of Filipinos' lives. People reducing travel to save money is understandable."

The National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help at Baclaran in Parañaque. Tens of thousands of worshippers stream in every Wednesday. People selling jasmine flowers, barbecue vendors, jeepney touts,they mix inside and outside the church, and among them, worshippers clutching rosaries come and go endlessly. Wednesday at Baclaran is Manila's festival and ritual where faith and life are tangled together.

Wednesday, March 25, was the day right after President Marcos declared the energy emergency. Al Jazeera's local correspondent Ted Regencia photographed Baclaran Church on that day. The usual bustling activity had almost vanished. The horn blare of jeepneys that had echoed outside the Romanesque church had quieted, and the sound of the vendors' generators had stopped.

Ruben, a 27-year-old parking attendant outside the church, had been standing since 3 a.m. for more than 12 hours, but his tip income was only about 6 dollars,not even half of normal. Emily Ruado, 59 years old, mother of four. She sold toilet paper and sundries around the church and earned 10 dollars a day, but since the war, her income had shrunk to 5 dollars a day.

As public transportation shrank, the way people arrived at the church changed. Some people had walked for hours instead of taking buses or jeepneys. They had no choice but to walk without transportation. The boundary between walking as a traditional religious penance during Holy Week and walking because there was no gas became blurred. Religious silence and economic paralysis overlapped at the same time and place.

With buses and jeepneys reduced, the remaining choice was the subway. Passengers flooded into Manila's MRT and LRT. The already inadequate subway system created bottlenecks during rush hour. The fuel crisis had laid bare how underdeveloped Manila's public transportation infrastructure actually was.

Beneath the silence of Holy Week, the fear of inflation was growing. Energy is transportation cost, and a surge in transportation costs means a chain reaction of price increases in rice and basic necessities. President Marcos announced, "We will provide fuel and fertilizer subsidies to farmers and fishermen so that the increase in diesel prices will not be passed on to consumers." The presidential office issued an administrative measure banning price increases on basic necessities through April 16, and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) promised to monitor weekly. Yet with the primary source of urea, a key ingredient in fertilizer, located in the Middle East and its export routes passing through the Strait of Hormuz, it was uncertain whether subsidy handouts alone could prevent fundamental increases in food prices.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin summarized in one sentence. "If global oil prices reach 200 dollars a barrel, Filipinos will have to change their way of life." The worshippers at Baclaran Church were already changing theirs. They walked instead of taking the bus. They lit candles and prayed. The content of their prayers had changed. That tomorrow they could buy rice to feed their children. That the jeepney their husband drove would move again. That the war in the Middle East would end.

The distance from Manila to the Strait of Hormuz is roughly seven thousand kilometers. The sound of bombing in the Persian Gulf does not reach this place. Yet with each change in the numbers on the gas station price board, with each jeepney that disappears one by one from the alley, with each additional person walking toward the cathedral, the shock wave of war was silently cutting through this city. There was a message displayed on the electronic billboard on EDSA Avenue: "Let us pray for the Middle East." For Manila's ordinary people, that prayer was not for the Middle East alone. It was for themselves.

Kim Kyungjin, AI Expert and Lawyer

Specialist in AI Legal Policy · Former Member of the National Assembly · Author of Multiple Works

If this book has stayed with you for even a moment, please support it so that the next story can reach the world.

(Voluntary support account: Agricultural Cooperative Bank 302-1096-0948-81 Accountholder: Kim Kyungjin)