Consumers will feel anew the painful pinch of higher prices at the pumps this week as gasoline prices will rise by P1.00 per liter; and diesel prices will also climb by P1.20 per liter.

Additionally, the price of kerosene products - that has direct effect on aviation fuel as well as other major industries and households; will increase by P1.00 per liter.

As of press time, the oil firms that already sent notices on their price hikes effective Tuesday (August 20) had been Shell Pilipinas Corporation, Cleanfuel, Seaoil, PetroGazz, Jetti Petroleum, Chevron and PTT Philippines; while their industry peers are expected to match competitors’ cost escalations at the pumps.

Prior to this new batch of adjustments, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) has shown that pricing seesaw since the start of the year still logged net increases of P7.05 per liter for gasoline and P4.75 per liter for diesel products.

Kerosene commodity, on the other, had been relatively better placed as its price already posted net reduction of P3.15 per liter, as culled from the energy department’s data.

Global experts noted that the climb of prices in the world market last week had been generally precipitated by fresh wave of escalated tension in the Middle East – primarily on anticipated retaliatory attacks on Israel by Iran as well as Hezbollah from Lebanon and also the Houthis in Yemen.

Last week’s new wave of geopolitical distress had prompted international benchmark Brent crude to climb above $81 per barrel level from its plunge to $78 per barrel in the previous week.

As of Friday (August 16), however, Brent crude settled back at $79 per barrel following a report by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on overall demand slowdown this year due to weaker-than-expected economic data from key economies, primarily China.

The projection of the global oil producers is for demand growth to be on the softer side at 2.11 million barrels per day, which is lower by 140,000 barrels per day from original projection.

Had it not been for the scaled down demand forecast of OPEC that was released latter part of last week, oil price adjustments at the pumps this week should have been higher, according to the industry players.