Since the start of this year, our Tuesday news has taken on a predictable, albeit stressful, rhythm. There is a collective “here we go again” as the digital boards at the gas stations flick to new, higher numbers.

This March, however, it feels less like a routine hike and more like a genuine shock. With the Philippine Peso finally breaching the 60-to-the-dollar mark for the first time, and Middle East tensions tightening global oil supply, we are not just looking at a usual price hike – we are facing another fuel price shock.

However, this is not the first time that the world has experienced a fuel price shock. More than half a century ago, during the Arab oil embargo, the world saw for the first time the critical use of oil as a geopolitical weapon. That time, oil jumped from $3 a barrel to $11, equivalent to $80.58 today. Between that crisis and the Iran War today, we have had seven more shocks.

Research indicates that while shocks have historically been attributed to supply issues, modern shocks often stem from a combination of demand shifts, speculative activity, and geopolitical events. It could be supply disruptions due to maturing fields and political instability, demand surges driven by the rapid expansion of the global economy, and financial factors stemming from speculative investments in commodity markets.

The immediate impact of every fuel price shock on the Philippines is far-reaching, primarily because the country imports more than 90 percent of its oil. When global prices spike, the “pass-through effect” hits Filipino pockets almost instantly. This does not stop at the gas station; it creates a cascading inflationary process, especially given the weakening peso against the US dollar, which made importing oil much more expensive.

The transport sector is always the first to feel the burn. While the government has halted some planned fare hikes to protect consumers, the pressure on drivers is immense. Because fuel is a primary input for farming and delivery, a shock at the pump also quickly becomes a shock at the dinner table. The shock ripples into other monthly bills, such as electricity.

Perhaps more importantly for the average commuter, Malacañang suspended the planned fare hikes this March. While this puts a squeeze on operators, it prevents a “domino effect” in which transport costs immediately inflate the prices of every tomato and kilo of rice in the wet markets.

Filipinos, however, have shown admirable resilience in every crisis. Our country has survived floods, lockdowns, and other major disasters. We are expected to cope with oil shocks the same way we cope with everything else: through a mix of high-level policy, corporate pivot, individuals' ability to find faster, cheaper, and smarter ways to get from point A to point B, and the classic Filipino “diskarte.”

The most immediate way residents are coping is by abandoning the car-centric mindset out of sheer necessity. The use of the MRT, LRT, and carousel buses, as well as government-provided free bus rides, will definitely help ease the problem. Consolidating errands, raising the settings on our air conditioners, carpooling, reducing the number of workdays, and work-from-home arrangements will help everyone survive this crisis.

In Metro Manila, an oil price hike is usually a math problem;in the provinces, the sting of rising prices and fuel shocks hits differently. It is not just a cost-of-living issue; it is a cost-of-producing crisis. It does not just make the tricycle ride to the market more expensive. It makes the tractor more expensive to run, the irrigation pump more costly to fuel, and the middleman’s truck more pricy to load. For rural Filipinos, coping is not about switching to an e-scooter; it is about a radical return to self-reliance and community-led strategies.

Rural areas are often the first to feel the pain of a global crisis, but they are also the best positioned to opt out of the most volatile parts of the global economy. There is a unique strength in the Philippine countryside that the city lacks: the gift of space and the tradition of sharing. By turning idle backyard lots into communal vegetable patches, a family in the province can bypass the inflation at the local wet market. When you grow your own vegetables and raise your own livestock, the price of gas is just a little bit less. For farmers, the oil shock may even become the final push needed to break away from predatory middlemen. In the past, a farmer might sell their harvest for a pittance because they could not afford the fuel to transport it to the city.

We may not be able to control the flow of crude through the Strait of Hormuz, but we can control how we move, how we eat, and how we support each other through the "jumbo" hikes. Today, the more urgent issue is not the price of oil, but its availability.

The author is an executive member of the National Innovation Council and lead convener of the Alliance for Technology Innovators for the Nation (ATIN). ([email protected])