Another round of oil price rollback today spacer
October 23rd, 2008 | by mantrionline |In the face of growing criticisms, the country’s oil companies are cutting anew their pump prices by P1.00 per liter between 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m. today.
The major oil firms – Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and Petron Corp. – are the first to roll back their prices across products like gasoline, diesel and kerosene.
The first to send advisory on the price cuts was Eastern Petroleum, but its rollback was effective at 6 a.m. today.
The other oil firms which announced rollbacks are Seaoil Philippines and PTT Philippines, also effective at 6 a.m. today. Chevron (formerly Caltex) indicated it will follow the lead of competitors.
Some oil companies hinted that bigger price rollbacks are due next week, taking into consideration the forthcoming All Saints’ Day, which is also a travel time for most Filipino families.
The industry players said the price reductions were in response to the softening of prices in the world market.
Seaoil president Francis Glenn Yu said Seaoil’s prices are still cheaper than industry rivals because of the P2 per liter rollback it implemented last week.
After this reduction, gasoline products for most of the oil companies will already be sold at stations at P44.07 to P48.15 per liter; diesel at P43.95 to P46.09 per liter; and kerosene at P48.45 to P51.80 per liter.
Malacanang has been prodding the oil companies to implement bigger rollbacks to fully reflect the downtrend of world prices. But the industry players said any price adjustment must be done in accordance to policies on inventories.
Experts expect global oil prices to continue to skid because of the demand crunch triggered by the financial crisis engulfing world economies.
In fact, even the powerful Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is holding a crisis meeting in Vienna to decide whether it needs to review or reduce production targets.
Of the oil cartel-members, only Saudi Arabia was “moderate” on the issue.
It was learned that the powerful bloc of oil producers has also been weighing prospects whether this kind of decision will impact greatly on market fundamentals.
Already, economists are anticipating sizeable demand crunch in the United States and the Eurozone countries because of the financial crisis.
