It’s another week of drive to the gasoline stations that will come lighter on consumers’ pockets as the price of gasoline products will be on rollback by P1.00 per liter; and diesel product prices will be reduced by P1.30 per liter, according to the pricing advisories of the oil companies.

Similarly, the price of kerosene, which is the other commodity in the weekly price swings at the pumps had been down by P1.65 per litter.

As of this writing, the oil firms that already sent notices on their price cuts effective Tuesday (September 17) had been Shell Pilipinas Corporation, PetroGazz, Seaoil Philippines and Cleanfuel; while their industry-peers are anticipated to follow.

Prior to this round of cost movements in the domestic downstream oil industry, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) had shown that price adjustments since the start of the year still logged net increases of P5.85 per liter for gasoline and P3.05 per liter for diesel; while kerosene prices already posted net decrease of P4.70 per liter.

Prices in the world market were generally on downtrend last week – mainly due to lack of new fundamentals that could lift sagging prices.

The array of factors which precipitated depressed prices had been the lingering weak economic outlook for key economies – primarily China; while the production boost plan of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), even if delayed for several months, also failed to influence price escalations.

As of Monday (September 16) trading, international benchmark Brent crude just inched up a bit at the higher end of $71 per barrel level, but there are no clear signals yet that prices could consistently hit uptrend in the remaining trading days this week.

For the Philippines, in particular, the strengthening value of the peso versus the US dollar has also been adding up bit of favorable development into pump prices, hence, the heftier downtrend ultimately reflected at the pumps.

Within the month of September, this is already the second round of slashed prices at the scale of P1.00 per liter and above; and consumers can only wish for more weeks of fuel expenses that will come easy on their weekly budgets.

The constant seesaw of prices that yielded more instances of rollbacks since July had also calmed the public transport drivers as well as businesses which are often agitated if the series of adjustments have been tracking price hikes.