There’s a reverse course in oil prices that shall be reflected at the pumps on Tuesday, Dec. 20, as consumers will now have to brace for increases in the costs of fuel products, according to the oil companies.

Based on the estimates of industry players, diesel prices will rise by P1.90 to P2.30 per liter, while gasoline prices will be on uptick by P0.20 to P0.60 per liter.

The other commodity that will increase in the routine price adjustments next week will be kerosene products as the scale of P1.50 to P1.80 per liter.

The oil firms will be implementing the anticipated upward adjustment in prices based on the swing of prices leaning on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), an index that has been tracking movements of prices in the Asian market as well as globally -- and that is also the adopted pricing reference of the deregulated downstream oil industry in the Philippines.

This fresh round of escalation in prices will be bad news to Filipino consumers – especially with the scale of traffic that they would have to wade through on the roads either for their daily commute to work; or in driving to areas where they will be running some errands.

The Christmas fever has evidently been causing the influx of vehicles plying not just various Metro Manila thoroughfares, but even in the provinces; so the price hikes at the pumps will come as another punishing development in the pockets of consumers; in addition to the relentlessly rising prices of basic goods.

Prior to this round of adjustment, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) has shown that fuel prices since the start of the year still logged net increases of P24.60 per liter for diesel; P13.25 per liter for gasoline; and P19.15 per liter for kerosene products.

After dropping to the level of $73 to $75 per barrel in the other week, the spot price of international benchmark Brent crude climbed back near the $80 per barrel territory as of Friday (December 16) trading.

Market experts said the triggering factors to the new ascend in prices had been the niggling uncertainty on China’s reopening from the shackles of the Covid pandemic; as well as the stretched unavailability of the Keystone pipeline that has been delivering oil from Canada to the United States – as mandatory cleanup has been warranted following an oil spill incident in that facility.

Experts added the element which provided counterbalance to market price upswings last week had been the almost-simultaneous decisions of the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England to hike interest rates.

At this point, the market signals being seen by industry experts will be for global oil prices to continuously track uptrends in the remaining days of the year; unless there’s a major incident that could prompt plunge in prices.