THE country’s net oil import in the first six months of the year went down to $8.16 billion, 17 percent lower than the $9.83 billion recorded in the same period a year ago, data from the Department of Energy (DOE) showed.
The net import bill is the difference between oil imports and exports. In terms of total volume, the DOE recorded 13.45 billion liters at end-June this year from 12.91 billion liters in the same period a year ago.
The country’s total oil import bill amounted to $8.38 billion, 16.6 percent lower than the $10.06 billion posted at end-June of 2022. In terms of volume, total imports slightly rose to 13.76 billion liters from 13.10 billion liters.
“This was attributed to low import cost of crude and finished petroleum products in the first half of 2023 vis-a-vis first half of 2022,” the DOE report stated.
Of the total imports, 78.2 percent consists of finished products and 21.8 percent is crude oil.
The same data showed total crude imports amounted to $1.825 billion, 6.3 percent lower than the $1.949 billion in the same period last year.
Imported crude oil reached 3.476 billion liters at end-June this year, up by 23.7 percent from last year’s level of 2.811 billion liters.
All crude oil imported from January to June this year was sourced from the Middle East; 50.2 percent of it came from Saudi Arabia, the country’s major supplier of crude oil. While 26.9 percent came from UAE and the remaining 22.9 percent were imported from Iraq.
Meanwhile, imported petroleum products stood at 10.281 billion liters from 10.291 billion liters of last year’s level.
The most imported product during the period is aviation turbo at 42.6 percent, which can be attributed to the lifting of travel restrictions. The same with importation of fuel oil and gasoline products, which grew by 27.5 percent and gasoline at 6.3 percent, respectively.
Most of the imported finished petroleum products was sourced from South Korea, 25.37 percent; China, 24.44 percent; Singapore, 23.79 percent; Malaysia, 12.58 percent; and Japan, 4.28 percent.
On the other hand, the Philippines’s export earnings amounted to $223.16 million, lower by 1.5 percent from $226.57 million.
In terms of volume, total petroleum product exports went up to 303 million liters from 192 million liters.
Majority of the country’s products export went to China with an export share of 34.94 percent, followed by South Korea with an export share of 28.84 percent. Next were Singapore, India, Indonesia and Taiwan with 19.93, 5.66, 5.12 and 4.2 percent export share, respectively. The remaining 1.33 percent was exported to Japan.
These petroleum products were made up of fuel oil, 17.1 percent; naphtha, 35 percent; mixed xylene, 19.4 percent; toluene, 11.3 percent; benzene, 4.2 percent; propylene, 3 percent; and molten sulfur, 10 percent.
Total crude oil exported for the period was up by 3.5 percent to 47.9 million liters from 46.3 million liters last year. The exported crude destination was Thailand.