After 10 consecutive weeks of price hikes in gasoline products and nine straight weeks of similar price adjustment for diesel and kerosene, oil firms announced a price rollback this week to give reprieve to consumers battered by high pump prices.
A P1 per liter rollback for gasoline, P0.60 per liter cut in diesel price and a reduction of P0.65 per liter in kerosene prices take effect on Tuesday morning.
This was announced Monday by Seaoil, PTT Philippines, Cleanfuel, Petron, Shell, Total, Caltex and Phoenix. Other oil firms are expected to follow suit.
Oil firms adjust their prices weekly to reflect movement in the international oil market.
According to the Department of Energy (DOE), the recent developments showed demand resulting shift to lower oil prices.
These include the decision of the Opec + 4 to stick to its decision of planned 400,000 barrels per day increase for December output, stoked by the recent developments showing weakened demand resulting shift to lower oil prices; weaker economic data from China and Beijingâs announcement to release state oil product reserves to ease the market tightness along with rising coronavirus cases in China further weighed on crude market; recent power crisis in China and India due to insufficient coal supply and Europe for high prices of natural gas resulted to weaker manufacturing sector, which resulted in weakened overall economic activity for the month of October; and surging Covid cases in China and Europe resulting to reintroductions of lockdowns.
DOE-Oil Industry Management Bureau (OIMB) Director Rino Abad said Monday if the power crisis in China and India, as well as the surge in Covid cases in China and Europe would prevail, the decline in pump prices might continue.
However, he warned that once the situation in the international scene improves then demand is expected to increase, thus affecting prices to go up.
âChina and India are producing more coal [while the] whole Europe is demanding more natural gas supply from Russia. It is just a matter of time that the power crisis will be resolved and then we will go back again to an improving economy and thus the demand for oil will increase,â Abad explained.
At the same time, however, an increase in Opecâs supply output is seen to stabilize the insufficient supply, with continued increase up to the first quarter of next year. Abad said this would help soften local pump prices.
âPlease note that there would probably a balance in demand and supply by end of the year up to first quarter of 2022. In this case, there is a tendency that prices will start to stabilize,â he said.
Last November 2, gasoline increased by P1.15 per liter, while diesel and kerosene prices have decreased by P0.35 and P0.30 per liter, respectively.
These resulted to the year-to-date adjustments to stand at a total net increase of P21.95/liter for gasoline, P18.10/liter for diesel and P15.74/liter for kerosene.