Preamble
WHEREAS, under Presidential Decree No. 87, otherwise known as the "Oil Exploration and Development Act of 1972" issued on December 31, 1972, it is the declared policy of the State to hasten the discovery and development of the country's indigenous petroleum resources; WHEREAS, the attainment of this desired objective is unnecessarily hampered by an acute shortage of Filipino technical personnel in the sciences related to petroleum exploration and development, the absence of an integrated data and information on the country's petroleum potentials and resources, and the lack of local petroleum laboratories to perform geological and geographical data processing and analysis; WHEREAS, it has become imperative to establish a governmental unit in the Petroleum Board which will have ample powers to attain the above objectives; NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers in me vested by the Constitution, do hereby decree, order and make part of the law of the land the following measure: