The Asia Pacific Basin for Energy Strategies (“APBest”) is the first energy and economic think-tank that invokes tested models of negotiation on oil pricing and supply-and-demand policies vis-à-vis OPEC, the Gulf oil states, financial institutions and traders involved in oil. Uniquely, it seeks to cohesively collaborate with the United Nations or an appropriate body thereof to effectively strike a modus vivendi on spiraling oil prices that has led to the crippling of the world’s economy. If there were UN organizations or agencies that address problems like AIDS, crime and drugs, global warming and climate change, even torture and land mines, more so is the imperative to urgently bring in the UN’s clout in mitigating the grueling effects of unprecedented oil price increases that breached the U$100 per barrel mark in March 2008.

APBest’s first advocacy paper, “Negotiating oil prices amidst oil’s crippling effects: An ASEAN Strategy,” was delivered before the ASEAN Energy Business Forum 2008, in conjunction with the 28th ASEAN Ministers of Energy Meeting, on August 6, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. The ASEAN Centre for Energy will endorse to the United Nations the “thought-provoking and action-pushing presentation” to propel the advocacy’s targets.

Exacerbating the oil crisis is the financial meltdown in the US spawned by the subprime and aggravated by defaults in derivatives swaps. Banks, financial institutions, and stock exchanges worldwide have been afflicted by this worst-ever global turmoil that cuts more deeply into the Philippines’ financial and economic conditions.

Hence, APBest ushers in this first, timely topic of its Round-table Discussions Series: “Financial meltdown’s impact on the poor: What can be done in the Philippines?”

Drawn from diverse areas of competency and specialized fields of expertise are the following panelists who will dissect the meltdown’s impact especially on the poor, and are prepared to offer doable solutions if the country were to survive from the quagmire in long-run, to wit: 1. Prof. Benjamin E. Diokno, Economist, Philippine National Bank Professor of Economics, University of the Philippines, former Secretary of Budget; 2. Atty. Angelo A. Jimenez, Expert on Middle East geopolitics and overseas workers, former Deputy Administrator, OWWA, former Labor Attaché in Kuwait, Iraq and Japan; and, Senator Francis G. Escudero, Chairman, Ways and Means Committee, Chairman, Justice Committee, Senate of the Philippines.