MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 30 May 2026) The discovery of oil deposits in Ligawasan is not recent. A post on a Facebook page saying otherwise is FALSE.
MindaNews fact-checked this claim as the post makes it appear that this is a new discovery.
On 12 April 2026, a Facebook user Mi Filipinas shared a post to the public group Philippine History & Current Events about gas and oil reserves in the Philippines “that, if extracted, are more than enough to lift the country out of poverty. Some natural gas deposits have already been confirmed through exploration, but most oil reserves remain unproven and largely unexplored due to limited extraction activities.”
The post says: “Recent discoveries, especially in Mindanao—specifically within the Cotabato Basin and Liguasan (sic) Marsh—offer the strongest evidence of oil deposits near the Liguasan (sic) Marsh area within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).” [emphasis added; the name of the marsh is Ligawasan]
“Geological studies estimate up to 4.8 billion barrels of crude oil potential and about 3.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Some gas deposits have been confirmed, but most oil remains unproven and unexplored,” it adds.
On the Philippine History and Current Events Facebook Group, the post has garnered 575 shares, 498 comments, and around 2.2K reactions as of May 30.
Mi Filipinas has 191,000 followers while Philippine History & Current Events has 148,000 members as of the same date. The engagement data from its own page is much higher than the one on the Facebook Group post.
As of 6:30 p.m. on May 30, 2026, the post on the Facebook Group has generated 7,300 reactions, 1,100 comments, and 1,600 shares.
The Facts
Contrary to the post’s claim that discoveries of oil deposits within the Cotabato Basin and Ligawasan Marsh area are recent, the first drilling occurred in 1916 (110 years ago) in Dulawan, a barangay in Datu Piang, Maguindanao (now part of Maguindanao del Sur after the partition of Maguindanao into two provinces).
The well, originally a water well, was able to flow 12 barrels of oil per day, according to a 40-page study titled ”Reconnaissance Geology and Oil Possibilities of Mindanao” by T.S. M. Ranneft et al, published as Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Volume 44, Number 5 May 1960.
“An oil seepage in northern Cotabato and oil and gas reported in a shallow hole indicate that petroleum generation occurred in the Cotabato Basin,” the study says.
“This was the very first exploratory hole in Mindanao and the well drilled reached a total depth of 1,800 feet and oil and gas shows associated with salt water were obtained from sandstones at 300; 1,400 and 1,800 feet respectively,” the same study, citing a 1959 source, says.
The presence of gas in Ligawasan was confirmed in the 1990s through a joint exploration between State-owned Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC) and its Malaysian counterpart, Petronas. But the project did not push through owing to security concerns. (H. Marcos C. Mordeno/MindaNews)
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