Prolonged happy days for consumers are here as prices at the petroleum pumps continue to fall this week with price of diesel products on P2.20 per liter rollback, while kerosene prices will also be trimmed by P2.50 per liter.
For gasoline products, however, the oil industry players said there will be "no price change" for this commodity in this round of cost movements.
As of press time, oil firms that already sent notices on their price cuts effective Tuesday, Feb. 14, include Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Seaoil, Cleanfuel, PetroGazz and Chevron. Other heir competitor-companies are anticipated to match their price cutbacks.
The decline in prices at the domestic gasoline stations had been anchored on the swing of regional prices as referenced on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), the pricing measure being adopted in the deregulated oil industry in the Philippines.
The series of price downtrends at the pumps in recent weeks somehow eased the financial burden of consumers – especially at a time when the prices of other basic commodities as well as services have been on upticks.
And as diesel prices have been manifestly logging major reductions, that had been largely beneficial to the public transport sector given the relentless complaints of drivers that their take-home cash mostly eroded in the past months.
According to experts, the plunge in global oil prices had been mainly traced to sluggish demand; even with the recent economic reopening of China; and that had been compounded by the recent interest rate hike enforced by the US Federal Reserve.
The seesaw in the costs of crude futures contracts had been apparent in the past trading days – with international benchmark Brent crude settling above $86 per barrel last Friday (February 10); but it had softened anew to $85 per barrel as of Monday (February 13).
The other factors being monitored are the imposition of price caps on Russia’s oil commodities; as well as its retaliatory move to trim production by 500,000 barrels per day.
As world supply-demand dynamics continue to tread on volatilities, an oil import-dependent economy like the Philippines will have no choice but to ride with the turbulent cycles of pricing at the pumps.