Instead of the anticipated rollback on prices of some petroleum commodities this week, the oil companies have implemented slight increase in prices at the pumps due to higher freight cost and market premium, according to the industry players.

With the added factors cited, the oil firms have uniformly enforced marginal price hikes of P0.10 per liter across gasoline, diesel and kerosene products effective Tuesday (January 9).

As of this writing, the oil companies that already sent notices on their price increases had been Shell Pilipinas Corporation, Seaoil, Cleanfuel, PetroGazz, Chevron and PTT Philippines; while the rest of their competitor-firms are all anticipated to follow.

From last week’s calculation of price adjustments as anchored on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), there had been projection of marginal rollback in gasoline and diesel prices; but higher freight costs due to the circuitous route of product deliveries had wiped out the estimated price decline.

It has to be noted that the continued attacks of the Houthi militants at the Red Sea had compelled shipping vessels to divert on their routes for commercially-traded commodities, including oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) which are widely used across energy markets around the world.

In the international market, prices continued to be on seesaw, but slight uptick had been manifest as of last week due to geopolitical tension in the Middle East, including the brewing tension between Israel and Iran.

Nevertheless, the full impact of the Middle East-induced geopolitical risks were still not enough to precipitate hefty climb in global oil prices, hence, the weekly price adjustments at the pumps had also been muted.

A global development that has been providing counterweight to the relentless geopolitical events had been slowdown in economic growths – especially in major economies of the world, and that has been easing pressure then on available supply flowing into markets.

For an oil import-dependent economy like the Philippines, continuing downtrend in oil prices will be beneficial to the country – primarily for the drivers of its public transport sector who have been leaning on daily wages for the survival of their families.

Within this year, the overall prognosis for the global oil industry will be for it to track relentless volatilities, hence, there could still be episodes of either massive price hikes or hefty rollbacks that Filipino consumers could expect weekly at the pumps.