It's a week of temporary financial relief for motorists as they will benefit from hefty rollback of P6.10 per liter for diesel and P5.70 per liter for gasoline products.

Oil companies similarly announced that effective Tuesday, July 12, the price of kerosene products, the base for aviation fuel used by airlines, will be trimmed by P6.30 per liter.

As of this writing, oil companies that already sent notices on their price reductions include Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Cleanfuel, PetroGazz; and Seaoil while their competitor-firms are anticipated to follow their pricing trends.

Beyond the usual cost impact of the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), which is the pricing reference by the domestic oil industry players, the falling value of the Philippine peso has also been impacting adversely on price swings at the pumps.

The Philippine oil market is heavily import-dependent, therefore, the country will be needing more dollars to purchase oil in meeting the demand of the Filipino consumers. The US dollar’s value had reached a high of P56.06 last Thursday (July 7), before settling back to P55.92 as of Friday (July 8).

Global oil prices plummeted last week, as experts raised higher probabilities of economic recession happening sooner than expected -- and that then could soften oil demand.

Such market scenario somehow ignited international benchmark Brent crude dipping to $103-$104 per barrel and that was mainly attributed to the profit taking move of market traders last week.

Nevertheless, as of Friday trading, world oil prices bounced back anew with Brent crude at $106 per barrel as of Monday, July 11, trading, indicating that next week’s cost adjustments may take the reverse course of price hikes again.

Following this week’s price cuts at domestic petroleum pumps, the resulting adjustments since the start of the year still accumulated net increases of P36.80 per liter for diesel; P24.30 per liter for gasoline; and P30.05 per liter for kerosene products.

In general, the prognosis of global experts is that the "era of high oil prices" is still far from over, not just due to the protracted Russia-Ukraine war, but mainly because of the extreme tight supply predicament of oil markets.

Given prospects of continued rise in prices, the Marcos administration is preparing a policy track that will increase financial subsidy to marginalized segment of end-users – primarily the public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers and farmers.

On the bigger core of policymaking, several lawmakers are also pushing for a legislation that will mandate fuel cost unbundling or segregation of price items – that way, there will be transparency that consumers can lean on for what they have been paying for at the pumps.