Gas P1.20/l, kerosene P3.50/l; oil price spike offsets 5-week rollbacks
Domestic pump prices went up by as much as P6.85 per liter effective today (Tuesday) a week after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies announced its decision to cut production to push up world oil prices.
Oil firms raised the price of diesel by P6.85 per liter, kerosene by P3.50 per liter, and gasoline by P1.20 per liter.
This week’s upward adjustment offset the rollbacks from the past five weeks, resulting in a net decrease of P2 for diesel, P3.90 for gasoline, and P6.45 for kerosene.
This early, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is proposing to source fuel from other countries such as Russia to secure the country’s oil supply requirements, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla.
“The President is, of course, encouraging us to source our oil supplies from the most competitive sources,” Lotilla said.
He said the Department of Energy is looking at contingencies in case supply is constrained from particular countries.
“As we have learned from Ukraine, there is the threat of war breaking out in some parts of the world, and this has to be taken into account as well by our downstream oil industry,” Lotilla said.
“Our downstream oil industry is in the hands of the private sector, but it always pays to encourage them to source from the most competitive sources, including Russia,” the energy chief added.
He said the downstream oil industry players are locked in long-term supply contracts.
“A number of them are locked in to long-term supply contracts, and therefore they would have to consider whether the offers can be competitive offers that Russia or other sources would be able to offer stable supply in the long run,” he said.
OPEC+ announced a production cut of two million barrels per day starting next month to push up oil prices which dropped slightly above $80 per barrel from a high of $120 per barrel in the previous months due to global recession fears.
World oil prices remained below $100 per barrel as of Monday.
Meanwhile, Meralco on Monday said electric rates will be lower this month as some of the component costs went down.
Residential customers consuming 200 kWh will see a decrease of almost P15 in their total electric bill.
The power distributor said the Feed-in-Tariff Allowance (FIT-All) generation charge was lower by P0.0619 per kWh, which pulled the rates down for the month.
Generation charge also went down in September to P6.9192 from P6.9393 per kWh due to lower costs in supply contracts.