Filipino motorists filling up their vehicles with diesel fuel will need to shell out higher budgets this week, as the price of that commodity will increase by P1.10 per liter while gasoline prices will climb by P0.75 per liter.

For kerosene products, the calculated upward adjustment this week will be at P0.90 per liter, according to pricing adjustment advisories sent by the oil companies.

As of press time, the industry players that already notified on their price increases had been Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Cleanfuel, Seaoil, Chevron and PetroGazz effective Tuesday, Jan. 11 while their rival-firms are expected to follow this week’s pricing trends.

The uptick in prices at the domestic pumps are mainly attributed to the surge of prices in the world market, with benchmark Brent crude surpassing the $81 per barrel mark as of last week’s trading.

The Department of Energy (DOE) said the recent rally in prices had been due to “outages in Libya, Ecuador and Nigeria, the emerging capacity constraints in Russia, and diminishing odds for Iranian sanctions relief.

As noted by experts, crude prices traded last week on a “bullish tone,” mainly because “the market sees limited impact on demand recovery from the Omicron variant.”

It was emphasized that despite the surging Covid-19 infections in various parts of the world, death and hospitalization have remained low, hence, allowing most countries to do away with the usual strict lockdowns.

“Rising geopolitical and operational risks are driving prices higher, despite OPEC+ (in reference to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and ally-producers) agreement to raise output by 400,000 barrels per day next month,” the DOE monitoring report has stated.

Uncertainties in production have likewise been exerting pressure on prices, with reports that Russia has been stagnating on its production quota; while the output of Kazakhstan, a non-OPEC producer, was also affected due to violent protests.

This is already the second week this month that oil prices will be on upswing; and there are no indications yet that prices will taper off in the coming days or weeks.