8-week oil price rollback streak comes to an end

Eight weeks of almost unabated decline in local pump prices almost comes to an end Tuesday (Dec. 11), when oil companies raise the price of unleaded gasoline by PHP0.40 per liter.

However, the rollback streak has not exactly come to a screeching halt yet, as the price of diesel is set to decrease by PHP0.10 per liter while kerosene will be rolled back by PHP0.45 per liter.

Industry sources said the conflicted trend in local oil prices is due to the plan of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to once again cut production in order to arrest the rapid decline in world crude prices.

It was reported earlier that OPEC and its allies agreed to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels per day to return the output between 1 million to 1.4 million barrels per day.

For the past eight weeks, oil firms reduced diesel prices by PHP10.55, while gasoline prices have gone down by PHP11.85.

“After the eight consecutive rollbacks, the total year-to-date adjustments for gasoline this week reached a net decrease of PHP0.45 per liter. For diesel, the net increase was further lowered to PHP 1.60 per liter same with kerosene with PHP1.53 per liter,” the Department of Energy (DOE) said.

Based on DOE’s monitoring, average retail price for diesel is at PHP38.10 per liter, gasoline at PHP47.10 per liter, and kerosene at PHP48.27 per liter as of December 4.