Oil firms roll back gasoline prices by P1 per liter

MANILA, Philippines - After announcing an oil price hike last week, local petroleum players yesterday announced a rollback in prices effective Tuesday midnight.

Petron Corp., Pilpinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and Chevron, the owner of the Caltex brand, were among the first to announce the price cuts of P1 per liter for gasoline, P0.35 per liter for diesel and P0.15 per liter for kerosene.

Other oil players such as Seaoil Philippines and PTT Philippines, the local subsidiary of Thailand’s biggest oil firm, also issued their respective announcements.

Petron said the price cut “reflects movements in the international oil market.”

The price cut comes after a price hike last week, the first hike after nine consecutive weeks of price rollbacks before that.

The Department of Energy (DOE) explained in its latest oil monitoring report that for gasoline and diesel, the market in Asia was in mixed trade over the week as sustained buying interest in Indonesia was tempered by sluggish demand elsewhere in the region.

“Indonesian’s November gasoline imports are estimated at a high 11.5 million barrels, steady from October, as domestic refinery outages continue. The sustained volume imported by Indonesia, along with demand from Malaysia and the Middle East, were somewhat replaced by exports by Taiwan and China, the biggest sources of gasoline last week at 159,234 and 113,703 metric tons, respectively,” the DOE said.