The first week of the year 2023 will start squeezing the pockets of consumers as gasoline prices will rise by P2.90 per liter, while diesel prices will also increase by P2.10 per liter, as announced by the oil companies.
Additionally, the price of kerosene, which is a commodity essential for households as well as key industries like the aviation sector, will climb by P3.05 per liter.
As of press time, the first industry player that already sent notice on its upward price adjustments had been Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation effective Tuesday (January 3); while its rival-firms are all anticipated to match the price hikes.
Amid the price uptrends at the domestic pumps, the saving grace for Filipino households had been the P3.09 to P4.20 per kilogram (kg) reduction that had been implemented for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) effective Sunday (January 1).
For the standard 11-kilogram LPG tank, the total cost reduction that consumers could enjoy in their cooking fuel would be between P33.09 to P46.20 per cylinder, depending on the brand that the end-users will be purchasing.
In particular, leading player Petron Corporation extended heftier price cut of P4.20 per kg for its LPG products; while its competitor-firm Solane had a smaller rollback of P3.09 per kg.
Petron similarly advised that its autoLPG, which is a fuel for motor vehicles, had been pared by P2.35 per liter; while Cleanfuel implemented cost reduction of P2.50 per liter.
The LPG firms enforced the price downtrends due to the softening of international contract costs as referenced on Saudi Aramco LPG contract prices, the benchmark for Asian markets for this commodity.
For petroleum products at the pumps, the escalation had been anchored on the fresh round of rally in international prices which followed the outcome of regional trading last week as indexed on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), the pricing paradigm that had been adopted by the deregulated downstream oil industry.
Petroleum prices are changing at the pumps on a weekly basis; while for LPG prices, this will stay for the rest of the month.
Onward, the forecasts of experts still point to lingering upticks in global oil prices for year 2023, as energy crisis compounded by the Russia-Ukraine war remains as a predicament for the world to grapple with.