U.S. fuel-depot plan in Davao draws a global bidder list — and local resistance

A Defense Logistics Agency solicitation for contractor-owned storage of naval and aviation fuel in southern Mindanao has pulled in terminal owners, traders and private-equity firms. City hall says it will not host a foreign military facility. A separate Cavite venture, not on the conference roll, says it is building bonded storage to compete with Singapore.

The United States wants a privately built fuel terminal on the Davao Gulf that can hold government-owned ship and aircraft fuel for American forces in the western Pacific. Nearly six months after the Defense Logistics Agency posted the requirement, the project sits between a crowded commercial field, a Philippine assurance that any site would remain under Manila’s control, and an explicit refusal by the City of Davao to host what it calls a foreign military facility.

If an award is made and the terminal is built, advocates in both capitals argue it would do two things at once: give U.S. ships and aircraft a refueling point south of Luzon, outside the Strait of Hormuz and away from the most contested waters of the South China Sea, and add physical storage in a country that has spent 2026 scrambling for buffer stocks. Opponents say the same tanks would turn Mindanao into a logistics node for someone else’s war, without lowering the price of diesel in the city.

What DLA actually asked for

On 31 March 2026, DLA Energy at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, issued solicitation SPE603-26-R-0522 for contractor-owned, contractor-operated fuel storage services in Davao, Philippines. The work is a Defense Fuel Support Point: the contractor builds or provides the tanks, laboratory and marine terminal; the fuel inside them remains U.S. government property.

The performance work statement attached to the notice on SAM.gov calls for a single facility with 977,000 barrels of storage — 548,000 barrels of naval distillate F-76 and 429,000 barrels of aviation turbine fuel JP-5 — with at least two interconnected, segregated tanks for each grade. That is about 41 million gallons, the figure Stars and Stripes and other U.S. and Philippine outlets used when the notice became public in April. The site must receive and ship around the clock, handle tankers at 6,600 barrels an hour and barges at 2,000, and take vessels up to 48,000 deadweight tons, 750 feet long, with a 42-foot draft. Minimum annual throughput is 1 million barrels. The contractor must inject icing inhibitor and corrosion inhibitor, load JP-5 to tank trucks, run a Type C laboratory on site, and account for inventory in DLA’s property system.

The geographic box in the solicitation is the western coast of the Davao Gulf, including Davao City, Davao del Sur and Malalag Bay. Industry summaries, including the contract listing on HigherGov, describe a five-year term with an 18-month readiness or construction period and 42 months of fuel services, and a target to be in service around April 2028. According to DLA’s posted amendments, the agency extended the offer date more than once — from 29 June to 20 July in Amendment 0003 of 5 June, with a later public listing showing a response date of 14 September 2026. No award had been announced at the time of writing.

A virtual pre-proposal conference was held on 20 April 2026 at 8:00 a.m. The attendance roll, which Real News Online has reviewed, recorded 39 requested attendants. Thirty-two named attendees on the pages provided represented 13 companies. Organizers listed on the header were not bidder firms.

Who came to the first meeting

The commercial field mixes a listed fuel merchant, the owner of the country’s largest independent import terminal, a Dubai storage trader, and a set of smaller U.S. government contractors.

Philippine Coastal Storage & Pipeline Corporation sent eight people, the largest delegation, led by chief executive Richard Marie C. Tiansay, with Tricianne Zingapan, Christian Quiaoit, Aris Curayag, Francis Goingo, Malou Balboa, Paul Perez and Manuel Cuison. PCSPC operates the former U.S. Navy depot at Subic Bay Freeport — 6.3 million barrels, 91 tanks, nearly 160 hectares — under a 50-year lease with the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority that began in 1993, according to I Squared’s October 2024 acquisition announcement. I Squared Capital, the Miami infrastructure manager, completed its purchase of PCSPC in March 2025, according to its counsel, Latham & Watkins; trade publications IPE Real Assets and Storage Terminals Magazine reported the deal’s value at between $460 million and $510 million. I Squared sent Nishhant Dsouza, Nikhilesh Chaudhary, Sungku Kang and Ashish Singh. The firm says on its website that it manages more than $50 billion in assets. In October 2025 its founder, Sadek Wahba, met President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.; the Presidential Communications Office and the Philippine News Agency reported more than $1 billion already invested in the Philippines and a commitment of up to $2 billion.

World Fuel, the brand of NYSE-listed World Kinect Corporation, was represented by Joseph Eichorn. The Miami company reported $36.9 billion of revenue for 2025 and about 16.9 billion gallons of volume, according to its full-year results released on 19 February 2026. Mina Group / Mina Petroleum of Dubai, which built a 230,000-cubic-metre fuel depot (roughly 1.4 million barrels) at Salalah, Oman, outside the Strait of Hormuz, according to the maritime outlet Splash247, sent general manager Sugumar Rajamani and Daniel Worku. Crowley Maritime of Jacksonville sent Ashley Mann, Kristian Rogers, Gavin Hughes and Angela Watson. DGC International of McLean, Virginia — awarded in March 2025 a DLA fuel-storage contract at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, with a maximum value of $397.7 million, according to the Pentagon contract announcement reported by AFCEA’s Signal magazine — sent principal Ayman Bekdash. The company has also said it holds into-plane work in the Philippines.

Also on the roll: KVG LLC of Gettysburg (Scott Mulvihill, Mollie Stitt); United Capital Investments Group (Mary Joan Ang, Allan Prince F. Diu, John Sigfried G. Hofer); Cerberus Capital Management (Greg Metro, Hirko Amenu); Hayden Business Strategies (Patrick Hayden, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral); Red Orange of Fort Washington (Bibin J. Nair); MEAK Solutions of Mentor, Ohio (Hazel Escano, Eric Kettani); and Radiant Sphere of Houston (Amiel Lopez). Attendance is not evidence of a bid. Several of these firms are procurement shops or advisers, not terminal operators.

A bidder that stayed off the roll

Thuesen Contracting Corp. of Mount Kisco, New York, was not on the 20 April conference roll. Written confirmation provided to this newsroom shows that the company did submit a proposal under solicitation SPE603-26-R-0522, as prime offeror in a consortium with Northonmark Industries Corp. of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. DLA does not publish the identity of offerors before award, so the submission does not appear on the pre-proposal attendance list and would not otherwise be visible in the public contract file.

Separately, Stahl Brenn Group, LLC, which describes itself as a newly formed special-purpose vehicle, says in a development plan it has circulated that it is pursuing the first customs-bonded independent storage terminal of its kind for the Manila Bay side of Cavite, on submerged land near the former Sangley Point air station. In the oil trade this is an entrepôt tank farm: a customs-bonded warehouse inside a free-trade or special economic zone, where suppliers lease tankage, hold product in bond, and reship it to third countries without releasing it into domestic consumption. The company says it has secured rights over 200 hectares that still have to be reclaimed. If the plan materializes, it would be a commercial trading hub aimed at a slice of the role Singapore plays in regional product storage — not, on its face, a Defense Fuel Support Point.

The two projects are easy to conflate and should not be. Davao, if awarded, would store U.S. government F-76 and JP-5 for military issue. A Cavite bonded terminal would store third-party commercial barrels for resale and re-export. They compete only in the scarce currency of Philippine coastline, dredging permits and political permission.

The opposition in Davao

Local resistance began within days of the first press reports. On 14 April 2026 the City Government of Davao said it “does not welcome and will oppose any plan to build foreign military facilities” inside the city, as reported by SunStar Davao and the Philippine Daily Inquirer. On 16 April, Harvey Lanticse, acting head of the City Information Office, said in a statement published by the city government that such a facility “will not help lower fuel prices, nor will it cushion the impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.” On 21 April, Councilor Pamela Librado-Morata, who chairs the council’s committee on labor and employment opportunities and human rights, aligned herself with that position in a privilege speech, calling the depot “a strategic military installation” and warning that it would make the Philippines “a proxy staging ground for foreign conflicts,” SunStar Davao and the Manila Bulletin reported. She contrasted reports of millions of gallons stored for a foreign military with a national energy emergency at home.

“A direct threat to our environment, our communities, and our national sovereignty.”— Dr. Jean Lindo, Gabriela Southern Mindanao, via the Inquirer

Dr. Jean Lindo, chair of Gabriela Southern Mindanao, called the project “a direct threat to our environment, our communities, and our national sovereignty,” the Inquirer reported, and said hosting it risked “turning Davao into a target in global conflicts.” Political analyst Edmund Tayao, of Political Economic Elemental Researchers and Strategists, told BusinessWorld on 16 April that the opposition was “misplaced,” because defense arrangements sit with the national government, and suggested the city’s stance also reflected a longer skepticism of U.S. military presence under previous local leadership.

Manila’s public line has been different. Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy’s spokesman for the West Philippine Sea, said a Mindanao site would remain under Philippine control and that any fuel-storage plans were covered by the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and the Visiting Forces Agreement. “This will still be Philippine facilities, Philippine controlled facilities,” he said, according to The Philippine Star on 12 April. EDCA gives U.S. forces access to agreed locations; it does not, by itself, settle a city hall veto or an environmental permit on the Davao Gulf.

Hormuz, and the China problem

The solicitation landed in the middle of a fuel shock. Philippine carriers and oil executives have spent the year pricing a war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, and with repeated interruptions in and around the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large share of Asia’s crude and product normally passes. The Civil Aeronautics Board has repeatedly raised the airline fuel surcharge, lifting it to Level 13 for the first half of September, PortCalls Asia reported. Congressman Marcelino Libanan had already urged the Philippine National Oil Company to build coastal fuel storage in the Visayas and Mindanao, the Manila Bulletin reported in March. In mid-March the government authorized PNOC to buy up to 2 million barrels of buffer fuel, according to The Philippine Star and the Philippine News Agency.

A Davao Defense Fuel Support Point would not refill that civilian reserve. The product is military specification, and title stays with the U.S. government. What it would do is move a slice of American operational fuel outside the Hormuz–Malacca–Singapore chain. Salalah, where Mina already stores fuel, was built for the same reason: a navy that does not have to enter the Arabian Gulf. Port Moresby, where DGCI holds the DLA storage contract, and northern Australia are the other nodes in view; Stars and Stripes reported that DLA Energy’s commander toured fuel-storage sites in both Australia and Papua New Guinea. Davao would sit on the Celebes Sea side of Mindanao, closer to the Sulu and Celebes approaches than Subic, and usable if a crisis in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait made Luzon terminals congested, politically constrained, or physically at risk.

“This will still be Philippine facilities, Philippine controlled facilities.”— Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, Philippine Navy, via The Philippine Star

That is also the objection. A tank farm that is useful precisely because it supports U.S. operations in a contingency involving China is, to the Davao council and to Gabriela, the reason to refuse it. Beijing has treated EDCA sites as part of an encirclement. A southern logistics point does not change the legal status of the South China Sea, but it does thicken the U.S. ability to stay at sea if commercial hubs in Singapore, or the Strait itself, are not available. Philippine officials who favor the project argue the benefit is mutual only if the facility is Philippine-controlled, if construction and manning are local, and if the country separately builds the civilian stocks Libanan asked for. Those are conditions, not features of the DLA notice.