• CHERYL G. CRUZ
A mixed movement in the prices of petroleum products looms this first week of October even as oil companies already implemented a hike in the cost of LPG effective Oct. 1.
Diesel will increase by P0.20 to P0.40 per liter and kerosene by P0.30 to P0.65/L, while gasoline should go down by P1.80 to P2/L, oil companies announced over the weekend.
The exact price adjustments will be known today, Oct. 2.
Petron, meanwhile, implemented a P3.75/kg hike in liquefied petroleum gas Sunday. AutoLPG prices also increased by P2.09/L, inclusive of the value-added tax, to reflect the international contract price of LPG for the month of October.
The Department of Energy said “expectations of a substantial supply deficit though the end of the year kept prices supported”.
It added that OPEC’s latest forecast “is for global oil demand to outstrip supply by more than three million b/d (barrels per day) in the fourth quarter of 2023, with oil prices seeing a significant rise in recent months”.
The DOE Oil Monitor showed that gasoline logged a net increase of P17.30/L, P13.40/L for diesel, and P9.44/L for kerosene since the start of this year, following last week’s minimal P0.20/L reduction in the prices of gasoline and diesel, and P0.50/L for kerosene.
The paltry rollback came after more than two months of successive price hikes, which led drivers and operators of public utility vehicles to demand for another round of fare increase.
Transport group Piston also criticized the recent oil price rollback as “blatantly insignificant compared to the overpricing of oil companies enabled by the Oil Deregulation Law (ODL)”.
“This meager rollback is an insult to the citizens, especially to those directly affected by the weeks-long oil price hike,” Piston said in a statement, adding it has “no effect in addressing the diminishing income of drivers and operators in the country”. It said the ODL has allowed oil companies to rake in billions of profits from overcharging at the expense of the Filipinos’ suffering from high fuel prices, and claimed that “oil companies in the Philippines have overcharged by approximately P40/liter for diesel and P33/liter for gasoline in the past four years due to the ODL”. | CGC
