By Myrna M. Velasco Prices at the pumps will be on uptrend this week at the scale of P0.55 per liter for diesel; P0.30 for gasoline products and kerosene by P0.45 per liter, according to the industry players. The oil companies that already announced price adjustments as of this writing had been Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, PTT Philippines, Seaoil, PetroGazz and Chevron effective 12:01 and 6 a.m. on Tuesday (June 25); while the rest of the industry players are anticipated to follow their competitors’ price leads. This week’s price rally had been generally influenced by the aborted attack that the United States had launched against Iran, prompting global prices to soar primarily on latter part of trading days last week. That scale of pricing vulnerability had immediately affected Philippine price swings as it is a market heavily dependent on imports – basically because domestic prices have been moving on a weekly basis. And as the US-Iran tension still escalates, there is no certainty yet that global oil pricing volatility could be eased soon. In the days and weeks moving forward, market watchers and analysts are seeing two major global events that could potentially adversely influence or take pressure off on international oil prices. The first one will be the scheduled meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia-led producers in Vienna, Austria this week which will then determine strategy on how pricing volatilities will be addressed by this long-held alliance of world oil producers. It is anticipated that a “break-up on their market rebalancing strategy on production freeze” could trigger further fall on prices, because more supply could be injected into market despite slowdown in global economic growths. Another major world development closely watched is the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the G-20 Summit in Japan next week. It is worth noting that the lingering trade dispute between the United States and China had been impacting on economic growths globally – and has consequently been impacting also oil supply-demand balance. Depending on the outcomes of these major world events, along with the fresh round of geopolitical tension in the Middle East, consumers could be confronted with either upswing or downtrend in prices in the days ahead.