From Ang Bayan: CPP Urges Resistance Against US ‘Imperialist War’ And Plunder In Philippines’ ‘Last Frontier’

 August 1, 2026

The United States announced in July that it will rehabilitate Buliluyan Port, a civilian port in Bataraza, Palawan, to serve as an additional naval base on the island. The project will be funded with $9 million from the US Department of Defense’s Foreign Military Financing.

While the rehabilitation is being framed as an upgrade for the Philippine Coast Guard, the US has long used the port and nearby coastlines for amphibious exercises under the Balikatan and Kamandag joint military drills. In 2025, the US Marine Corps Littoral Combat Team used the site as a launching pad for HIMARS missile-firing exercises.

“The people must resist the US’ use of Palawan as a launch pad for its aggressive and provocative operations in the South China Sea and reject heavy presence of its troops on the island,” said Marco Valbuena, chief information officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). “These troops and ships place the Palawan people and the entire Filipino nation in direct danger of attack by the US’s enemies.”

Buliluyan Port is the sixth facility openly used by the US in Palawan. It adds to the US bases and facilities on the island, including two EDCA sites—Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa, which also serves as the main airport for residents and visitors of the province, and the 300-hectare island of Balabac, ancestral land of the Molbog indigenous people. Additionally, the US uses Oyster or Ulugan Bay in the town of Macarascas as a repair site for large ships. It has also built a naval base in the sea near the coast of Quezon town on the Western Palawan Coast. Meanwhile, US “advisers” and other troops under Task Force Philippines and Task Force Ayungin remain permanently stationed inside Camp General Artemio Ricarte, headquarters of AFP Western Command in Puerto Princesa. Palawan serves as the US warships’ “land anchor,” or main harbor, as they sail in the South China Sea.

“Hundreds of hectares of land and coastlines are being claimed by the US at the expense of the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, farmers, and fisher folk in Palawan,” Valbuena said. “Hundreds of thousands of hectares more of forests will also be destroyed by large mining companies rushing to supply critical minerals to US allies and for its planned ‘Pax Silica’ enclave in New Clark City, Tarlac.”

The island holds one of the richest deposits of a class of nickel ore needed for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, semiconductors and other advanced technologies that imperialist countries are fiercely jostling over. Most mining on the island is focused on nickel extraction.

The Palaweño masses have long opposed destructive mining in Palawan, regarded as the Philippines’ “last ecological frontier.” Last year, the provincial local government passed an ordinance imposing a 50-year moratorium on new mining operations on the island. The NDFP-Palawan welcomed the move, calling the ordinance “a major blow to imperialism and its plunder of the nation’s wealth, as well as to the US-Marcos Jr regime that bows and submits to the class interests of the imperialists and foreign mining corporations.”