With brownouts and higher fuel prices at the pumps, there’s another headache for Filipino consumers because the price of cooking fuel liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) had also increased by P2.20 per kilogram or an aggregate P24.20 for the standard 11-kilogram cylinder used in households.

This month’s rise in LPG prices will come as another spell of bad news, as many families are still confined in their homes because of persisting movement restrictions because of the nagging Covid-19 pandemic and the work-from-home arrangement for many workers.

Aside from LPG for cooking, the industry players also announced the P1.25 per liter increase on prices of their autoLPG products, an alternative fuel for vehicles, including taxi fleets.

As of this writing, the industry players that already implemented their LPG price hikes had been Petron Corporation for its Gasul brand; Phoenix Petroleum Philippines Inc. for its Super LPG; Isla Petroleum and Gas Corporation for Solane LPG; and Cleanfuel for its autoLPG products – and all have enforced adjustments effective June 1.

Solane’s pricing adjustment advisory had been at P2.18 per kilogram, inclusive of value added tax – and that was comparatively lower than the price increases enforced by its competitors.

The LPG sector had been regarded as the sub-segment of the oil industry that had partly flourished last year, even at the height of the pandemic, because that was a commodity heavily leaned on by Filipinos who have been stuck in their homes.

Prior to this round of adjustment, the pick-up price of LPG at Metro Manila retail outlets had been at P570 to P749 for the typical 11-kg tank, according to the Department of Energy’s monitoring report.

The price of LPG moves every first day of the month and this is benchmarked on the swing of prices ushered in by the contract prices (CP) of Saudi Aramco, the prime driver of LPG prices in Far East markets that include the Philippines.

According to the energy department, it is monitoring LPG price adjustments based on Saudi’s CP as well as the fluctuations on the peso-dollar exchange rate. And since the country is a very marginal market for LPG, it cannot in any way influence prices in the global market.

It has been tracked that LPG’s contract prices escalated alongside the upswing in crude prices; and it was mainly due to higher demand of countries, especially those that already reopened their economies on a wider scale following relatively successful Covid-19 vaccination programs.