Gasoline, diesel price hike set next week
By Myrna M. Velasco
Prices at fuel pumps will be on a reverse course by Tuesday, Feb. 21) temporarily ending the streak of rollbacks that somehow eased consumers’ pockets in recent weeks.
Based on calculation by oil companies, the price of gasoline will climb by P0.35 to P0.75per liter; while diesel prices will increase by P0.65 to P0.95 per liter.
For kerosene, which is another commodity that has weekly cost movements, its price is calculated to either have a rollback of P0.10 to P0.30 per liter or a possibility of "no price change" at the pumps.
The fresh batch of price adjustments would still be anchored on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), which is the pricing reference of the oil companies in the domestic deregulated downstream oil industry.
From a financial breather provided by the price cuts in the past two weeks, latest market fundamentals had emerged to trigger the new wave of seesaw in global oil prices.
According to market experts, the other round of release from the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) of the US to prop supply as well as the rise in the value of the greenback had impacted recent trading prices in the global market.
The strong economic data released by the US was also perceived to be igniting demand uptick, exerting pressure on available oil supply in markets.
As of Friday, Feb. 17 trading, futures contract for international benchmark Brent crude was hovering at $83 per barrel from a high of $85-$86 per barrel in the early trading days last week.
In the previous week, Russia’s plan on production cutback of 500,000 barrels per day served as the major impetus to escalation in prices in the international market.
Given the wildly fluctuating global oil prices, there is no clear direction yet how cost swings will shape in the days ahead, hence, consumers are not certain what the coming weeks will hold for them at the gas pumps.