One more thing that Prayuth should know

This issue cemented its own importance last week, in the form of a showdown between energy conservatives and those who believe that the May 22 coup will be a total failure unless the energy sector is drastically reformed.

So, here it is. Dear Mr Prime Minister, the 11th thing that you must know is that you are expected to bring the price of petrol down, contain the wealth of oil billionaires and replace the allegedly massive vested interests with national interests. You will have to do all the three substantially, or you will let slip a considerable chunk of public support.

If political amnesty is something that you are not supposed to touch, energy reform is quite the opposite. It doesn’t matter how politically and technically complicated and highly sensitive the latter is, and how it can land you in a no-win situation. While you can keep amnesty out of your must-do list, there’s no escaping the prices advertised in large figures at every petrol station in the country.

In my humble opinion, most Thais for the time being can grit their teeth and bear with a coup-maker who installs himself as prime minister who dislikes soap operas and hates to be criticised, as long as those petrol station pricing signs display moderate numbers. The signs have been an eyesore, and a lot more so when the revenues of local and foreign oil giants are taken into account. The nastier the signs look, the more likely your dislike of soap operas will become a character flaw, and the more your disdain of criticism will be seen as dictatorial.

The extreme complexities of the energy issue can be boiled down to this: Expensive petrol and obscenely rich oil moguls. You can point at the Arabs as an excuse when it comes to the staggering wealth of those upstream in the oil trade, but you will struggle to explain, convincingly, why oil is considerably cheaper where it shouldn’t be. So, you are dealing with the worst-kept secret of human beings here: We are okay with others paying up to their necks the way we do, but if some people are paying less, all hell will break loose.

If that sounds “selfish”, be careful about using that word. Numbers are overwhelmingly on the critics’ side, and “selfish” can come back to bite you big time. One thing you must know first about energy reform is that its advocates are knowledgeable, well connected and well organised. If you throw technicalities at them, they will throw back some of their own. The only way to go is to be honest, open-minded and place national interests above anything else.

The reform advocates want you to decide first whether oil and other sources of energy found on Thai soil belong to the Thai people. Technicalities can wait. We must first settle the question “Who owns the energy?” and go from there.

Should we do away with concessions entirely? If not, what kind of concessions do we need? How much more should the government do and how much less should oil giants get? Is profit-sharing better than old-fashioned concessions? If so, what profit-sharing formulas fit Thailand? All these questions and their like can only be answered once we settle the aforementioned ultimate question.

You can give foreigners concessions to build high-speed trains, expressways or state-of-the-art sports stadiums. But what must be decided here is whether energy is the same thing, or in fact far more valuable and inseparable from national security and sovereignty. Should utilisation or commercialisation of energy be left totally up to elected politicians, or should there be some kind of unchangeable sovereignty edict governing them?

You will be hearing phrases like these from the status quo – “expertise”, “high technology”, “equipment”, and etc. All will be meant to prove that no matter who “owns” the energy, few people are qualified to find it (or risk not finding it and losing massively), process it and distribute it for the common good. You may be told: “Look at telecom. They said the Thai people owned the frequencies – but check out the prices of the Internet and how little things have really changed since the days of the monopoly.”

Your choices are simple: Leave energy alone because it could be too hot domestically and internationally, or bite the bullet because you see the issue as too important to ignore. Elected politicians have always opted for the former and there are very few signs they will ever take the latter. That leaves just one question: What will you choose?