The Marcos administration is halting government-led fuel imports for May as national storage facilities approach their limit, energy officials said on Monday, April 27.

The Department of Energy (DOE) will pause new procurement following the arrival of 900,000 barrels of diesel this month, according to Energy Undersecretary Alessandro Sales. Sale said the decision was due to logistical bottleneck where the country essentially running out of room to store subsidized or state-purchased buffer stocks.

Speaking at a media briefing on April 27, Sales said there are no fuel shipments scheduled for next month as the government seeks to “balance out” existing inventories.

National oil reserves have swelled to a 54-day supply as of April 24, a volume sufficient to last until mid-June. Within that stockpile, gasoline reserves stand at 53.91 days and diesel at 54.61 days. Kerosene remains the most robust at 168.74 days, while liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the outlier with a tighter 38.44-day supply.

“We don’t have a lineup for arrival next week,” Sales said, noting that diesel inventories specifically were pushed above the 50-day mark through recent aggressive buying.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said the country’s total storage infrastructure has a maximum capacity of approximately 60 days.

With levels currently hovering just below that ceiling, Garin indicated that a second round of supply replenishment is unnecessary and physically impractical at this stage.

The build-up was finalized through four diesel shipments totaling 1.12 million barrels, managed by the Philippine National Oil Company-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC). The procurement strategy, which began with a 142,531-barrel shipment from Japan in late March, was designed to shield domestic consumers from the volatility of global crude benchmarks.

The pause in imports coincides with a significant reprieve at the pump. The government-prescribed price adjustments for this week show diesel prices falling by ₱12.94 per liter and kerosene dropping by ₱15.71 per liter. Gasoline, however, bucked the trend with a modest increase of ₱0.53 per liter.

While retail prices fluctuate by location and brand, the DOE maintained that any price hikes must remain within a prescribed range, while rollbacks are prohibited from falling below a mandatory minimum cap.