'Big 3' cut gasoline, kerosene prices by P1/L; SeaOil by P2

MANILA, Philippines – The “Big Three" oil companies will slash gasoline and kerosene prices by P1 per liter starting 12:01 Saturday, while small oil player Seaoil is bringing down its gasoline price by P2 per liter and its kerosene by P1 per liter. A report by radio dzBB quoted SeaOil president Glenn Yu as saying the rollback takes effect at 10 p.m. Friday. Half-an-hour before SeaOil’s announcement, Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. announced a P1 per liter reduction in its gasoline and kerosene prices effective midnight Friday. In a text message to GMA News, Roberto Kanapi, Shell vice president for corporate communications, said: "We are pleased to advise (the public) that Shell will roll back prices of gasoline and kerosene by P1 per liter effective 12:01 of November 8." A separate report on radio dzBB later said Petron Corp. was also rolling back its gasoline and kerosene prices by P1 per liter starting Friday midnight. Chevron Philippines’s corporate communications manager Antonio “Tobi" Nebrida, in a text message, likewise announced a P1 per liter rollback on gasoline and kerosene effect 12:01 a.m. Saturday. Nebrida said the latest rollback would bring down gasoline prices to a range of P42-P45 per liter. Seaoil spokesman Rey Jimenez the rollback is a result of the continued softening of international prices. All four companies said there would be no yet in diesel prices. The new round of cuts was supposed to reflect the recent drop in world oil prices, which was near $61 a barrel Friday in Asia. Earlier in the day, the militant activist group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) lamented that fuel products in the country remained hugely overpriced despite the supposed "substantial" rollbacks announced by oil firms in past weeks. Bayan said diesel remained overpriced by P8.05/liter; kerosene by P12.09/liter and gasoline by P6.05/liter at end-October. Liquefied petroleum gas was similarly overpriced by P11.61 per 11-kg tank, it added. Bayan Secretary-General Renato Reyes Jr. said this means the oil firms still owe consumers more and bigger rollbacks this month. "We demand that they implement a single big-time rollback by the said amounts and not through installments as what they did in October and in the past months. Global prices continue to decline and the more they delay corresponding reductions in local pump prices, the more consumers are exploited through exorbitant prices," he said. Bayan said the situation underscores one of the most fundamental defects of the Oil Deregulation Law wherein oil firms are allowed to adjust pump prices at whim at the expense of the consumers. "Clearly, deregulation has only given more opportunities for the oil companies to exploit and abuse the people. All the supposed admonition by Malacañang of the abusive pricing of the oil firms is meaningless if policies that will effectively regulate the oil industry, including pricing, are lacking," said Reyes. He added that under deregulation, fair and reasonable oil prices are never possible. "The oil firms' over-recoveries in October plus their over-recoveries in the previous months comprise the current net overpricing that they must immediately offset through a one-time, big-time rollback," it said. Bayan also emphasized that its estimated oil "overpricing" at the pump stations is just the "small, small tip of a huge, huge iceberg." It said it does not represent the super-profits that the giant transnational corporations (TNCs) like Shell and Chevron accumulate through monopoly pricing as a result of their overwhelming control of the global upstream and downstream oil industry. - Johanna Camille Sisante and Mark Merueñas, GMANews.TV