CONTINUATION... Marcos replaces the 50-50 percent parity share in the exploitation of natural resources by a 60 percent Filipino share and 40 percent American share.
The entry of Marcos brother-in-law, Benjamin Romualdez, further alters ownership in the company. The Romualdez family then controlled most of the major shares of stocks. Jaime Ongpin became the first Filipino president of the company in 1974 after Ralph Crosby – last American director.
In the 1980s, the company acquired through a subsidiary, two ship carriers named MV Antamok and MV Balatoc, purposely for ore shipments to Japan and nearby countries.
Through the years, investments were also placed in real estate (Woodstown, Baguio city), lumber (Heald), Mineral explorations, industrial machineries, limestone for power plants (Sual Pangasinan power plant) and even water supplies (Agua de Oro and BWD bulk water). In later years, reforestation and ecotourism projects came into, including partnerships with small scale miners for gold scavenging.
The partnership happened when in the early 1990’s, the killer quake struck. At this point, company miners have already reached high temperature areas in the earth’s crust and that the quake created cracks that flooded deeper tunnels.
Supply of gold ore concentrates were also declining. Anticipating bankruptcy, the company retrenched several miners and started an open pit mining project. Bunkhouses were torn down including hospitals, schools, recreation halls, staff houses, and surrounding trees were cut. The open pit diverted also the Antamok River which in later years triggers a huge landslide in Barangay Loacan, Itogon. The only unscathed portion is the cemetery at Sitio Saldin. The one’s Antamok mini city became a parched land.
Analyst says that the Open pit mining has not returned much of the investments given and thus, has force the company to sell several assets to satisfy creditors and investors. And to comply with mining regulations, the company reforested the open pit mine site and almost all mining activities were terminated before the year 2000.
In this year and even during the glorious days of Benguet Corporation, the only few, visible and allowed small-scale mining can be seen at sitio luneta and at sitio saldin being mined mostly by the Ibaloys - opposite the huge Barangay Ucab, Itogon landslide.
Before, one can only see bushes, some trees, and not a single house can be seen below, beside or above the Ucab landslide, except the house and portal of the company at level 070. In the years 2001 and 2002 former miners and those from nearby provinces started to exploit several of the tunnels left by the company. They have briefly learned the skills and trade of small scale mining. The company tried to prevent it by way of security, blockades, padlocking portals and other similar acts.
Fruitless and exhausted, Benguet Corporation forge a partnership with some small-scale miners starting in Balatoc and Acupan at a 50-50 percent Ore share plus the use of the companies milling machineries. The arrangement goes well from end to end, until some miners decided to split and look for sites from Balatoc to Antamok where they can freely put up structures and owned what they have mined. These started the proliferation of unregulated small-scale mining to these days until Typhoon Ompong’s wrath.
Well as the saying goes “It's the things that you least expect that hit you the hardest.” As an epilogue, there was this story in a mining community about four engineers who passed away. One died by eating Balot, the other by removing a booger (kulangot), one by a single cough and the last by merely looking at a hole. To be continued...