After a shortl respite on consumers’ pockets last week, oil prices will be on big-time hikes again next week because of the sustained surge in prices in the world market.

As calculated by the oil companies, gasoline prices will rise by P1.00 to P1.10 per liter; while diesel will also be on upward adjustment of P0.70 to P0.80 per liter.

For kerosene, which is an equally vital commodity for households and industries, its price is anticipated to go up by P0.75 to P0.85 per liter, according to the oil companies.

The upward price adjustments, which will be due on Tuesday (August 3), will be the first for the month – coming from three-week increases in July and just one interlude of a rollback.

The additional cost-burden to consumers in the start of the new month will be also the estimated P2.00 to P2.50 per kilogram (kg) hike in the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a very important cooking fuel commodity for households, especially with the re-imposition of strict lockdown in the capital from August 6-20.

It could be culled that international benchmark Brent crude had stayed in the level of US$75 per barrel last week, and that’s a climb from the previous week, because of the reported decline in inventories of the United States, the world’s biggest oil consumer.

As recently reported by the US Energy Information Administration (US-EIA), its crude inventories had fallen by 4.1 million barrels; and even its gasoline stocks had also manifested a tightening tempo.

Despite the economy-crashing assault of the Delta variant of Covid-19, it was noted that it still had little impact on mobility in some countries that already had higher scale of vaccination on their citizens.

Since the start of the year, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) showed that pump price adjustments in the country still logged net increases of P13.60 per liter for gasoline, P10.90 per liter for diesel; and P9.30 per liter per kerosene.

For the Asian market, Platts described demand dynamics to be within ‘range bound’, as this is the region now heavily pummeled by the Delta variant, primarily due to low inoculation rate in many countries because of their fledgling access to vaccine supply.