Prices at domestic pumps will rise for the ninth time this year following last week’s ascend of global oil prices to more than $100 per barrel as an upshot of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the calculation of the Philippine oil companies, gasoline prices will be on uptick by P0.95 to P1.05 per liter while diesel and kerosene prices will be increased by P0.75 to P0.85 per liter.

The players of the deregulated downstream oil industry will adjust their prices on Tuesday (March 1), taking reference on the swing of the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), as based on the outcome of trading in the regional market.

Apart from retail prices at gasoline stations, the cost of cooking fuel liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is likewise anticipated to climb for the month of March and announcement will also be due next week.

The increase in LPG prices will be reckoned on international contract prices’ (CPs) rally that will be benchmarked on Saudi CPs, the barometer for pricing adjustments in the Asian markets.

For the oil commodities, in particular, global experts noted that while international benchmark Brent crude briefly skyrocketed to the US$105 per barrel last week; spot prices immediately took a reverse course to the softer scale of $99 to $100 per barrel on assumption that the reception of Western leaders on the propounded sanctions to Russia’s oil and gas exports had been lukewarm.

In fact, even the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its ally-producers (collectively known as OPEC+ or the Vienna Alliance) immediately made pronouncement that their March 2 meeting will still push through to decide on possible 400,000 barrels per day output hike to be concretized by April this year.

Russia is a key member of the OPEC+ aggrupation which was formed in 2016 -- and the main intent then was to address ‘price rebalancing concerns’ due to supply glut in the market.

Moving onwards to the pandemic-hamstrung 2021 and 2022, the oil market predicaments diametrically shifted to feared supply shortfalls – and there are also apprehensions on the spare capacity that could be injected into markets, including that of biggest world oil producer Saudi Aramco and other Middle Eastern producers like that of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait.

In the Philippines, the general sentiment of consumers is agitation over incessantly surging prices at the pumps – and its inflationary impact is already dreaded to be igniting transport fare hikes as well as swell in the prices of basic commodities and services.

The major plea of various oil-consuming sectors to the government will be immediate suspension of the excise taxes being enforced on petroleum products, but the Executive Branch has been tepid on that proposal.