Motorists filling up their vehicles with diesel will experience a breather this week, as the price of this commodity will be down by P0.40 per liter, based on the pricing adjustment advisories of the oil companies.
Conversely, gasoline products will have slight increase of P0.30 per liter; while kerosene prices will have marginal uptrend of P0.10 per liter.
As of this writing, the industry players that already announced their price adjustments had been Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Seaoil, and Cleanfuel effective Tuesday (April 18); while their competitor-firms are all anticipated to follow.
The domestic oil firms will be enforcing cost movements based on the swing of crude and finished products prices in the regional market as referenced on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), which has been the adopted benchmark of the deregulated downstream petroleum industry of the country.
There had been seesaw in prices in the world market last week because of diverging sentiments manifesting when it comes to projections on supply and demand - primarily in the second half of the year.
As noted by industry experts, following the announcement of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its ally-producers (collectively known as OPEC+) in the first week of April, prices escalated to the level of $87 per barrel.
However, due to the forecast of OPEC that demand will likely be weak during the second half of this year, prices dropped to the level of $84 per barrel for most of trading days last week.
By Friday (April 13), international oil prices had been on upswing again because of the pronouncement of the International Energy Agency (IEA) that there could be ‘supply deficit’ by the latter part of this year if OPEC+ producers will concretize their voluntary output cut.
As of Monday (April 17 trading), spot contracts for international benchmark Brent crude climbed to $86 per barrel from a relatively leaner $85 per barrel as of Friday (April 14) trading.
