File photo: A gasoline attendant in Las Piñas City readies the gasoline nozzle to fill up a tank on Monday. People are bracing for another big-time price hike on petroleum products.OIL firms will raise fuel prices this week as global oil prices continue to surge due to tightening OPEC supply.
This was announced by Petron, Shell, Caltex, Total, Seaoil, UniOil, Phoenix, PTT, and Cleanfuel. The price hikes takes effect starting today, Tuesday. Last August 22, oil companies implemented an increase of P1.10/liter for gasoline, P0.20/liter for diesel and P0.70/liter for kerosene. These price adjustments resulted in a year-to-date net increase of P14.50/liter for gasoline, P8.80/liter diesel and P5.84/liter for kerosene.
The local oil industry uses MOPS as benchmark for pricing of local products. Before, the country uses Dubai crude. However, this translates to one to two months lag time in reflecting the cost of products as it entails three weeks of travel time and another week or two for refining the crude and transporting the products to the pump.