A Crisis That Exposed a Structural Vulnerability
When the U.S.-Iran war broke out in February and closed the Strait of Hormuz, the Philippines had roughly 45 days of buffer fuel supply. That number tells the whole story. The archipelago imports 98% of its oil from the Gulf, and on March 24, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a nationwide energy emergency set to remain in effect for a year.
For Guillaume Lucci, CEO of Filipino infrastructure firm Prime Infra, the lesson is not complicated: 'What we need is more energy of all sorts, not only more renewable energy,' he told Fortune at the firm's headquarters in Pasay City, Manila. 'We don't see energy reliability and affordability as being decoupled from decarbonization, but for now, we need a bit of everything.'
A Portfolio Built for Resilience
Prime Infra's asset base reflects that philosophy. The firm's holdings span the Malampaya gas field, the Wawa hydropower dam — constructed between 2021 and 2025 and operational only since late last year — and a nascent waste-to-energy business. Water and waste management round out the portfolio, a direct response to a country where, according to Water.org, 59 million Filipinos, or 51% of the population, lack access to safe drinking water, and 37% cannot access clean toilets.
Lucci founded Prime Infra in 2017 with the backing of Filipino billionaire Enrique Razon Jr. The firm's stated model is to develop, invest and operate assets over the long term — not to build and exit. Lucci took on the CEO role in 2022 after initially serving as president and COO.
'The DNA of the company is to develop, invest and operate assets for a long time,' Lucci says. 'It's not about coming in, building assets, then going away. We intend to partner with and be embedded in local communities for decades to come.'
The Bureaucracy Problem
Lucci is candid about the headwinds. He cites heavy bureaucratic processes, the social complexity of building on indigenous land, and the Philippines' exposure to natural disasters as persistent obstacles. Designing for climate resilience, he notes, means engineering for extremes rather than averages — and that raises costs.
His broader argument against sequencing energy transition before energy security is grounded in construction timelines, not ideology. 'These projects take a long time to be built, mature and show returns,' he says. 'It's a slow-moving process, but one that's continuously in motion.'
Both Prime Infra and its sister firm ICTSI appear on Fortune's Southeast Asia 500 list, at No. 246 and No. 113, respectively.
The Market Signal
The Philippines' crisis is a live stress test for the all-of-the-above energy doctrine that Western capitals have been reluctant to embrace. Lucci's pragmatism — gas, hydro, waste-to-energy, and renewables in parallel — is exactly what capital markets reward when supply chains break down and the grid cannot wait for ideologically preferred solutions to scale.
The numbers make the case plainly: 45 days of buffer supply is not an energy transition problem, it is a sovereignty problem. Governments that subordinate reliability and affordability to a single-source green narrative leave their populations exposed to precisely the kind of external shock the Strait of Hormuz delivered. Free enterprise, diversified investment, and long-horizon operators like Prime Infra are not obstacles to energy security — they are the mechanism that delivers it.
