November 14 ------ Motorists using diesel in their vehicles are up for happy rides this week as the price of this fuel commodity will be on rollback by a hefty P3.00 per liter, according to the pricing adjustment advisories of the oil companies. For gasoline products, the price cut will be at leaner P0.70 per liter; while kerosene will have a more significant reduction of P2.30 per liter, as announced by the industry players. As of this writing, the oil firms that already sent notices on their trimmed prices effective today had been Shell Pilipinas Corporation, Seaoil, Cleanfuel, PetroGazz and Chevron; while their competitor-firms are all anticipated to match their enforced price adjustments.
The downtrend in prices at the domestic pumps had been mainly traced to the collapse of prices in the world market last week – that in turn had its spillover effect in the outcome of trading in the Asian markets. Philippine oil companies generally anchor their weekly price adjustments with the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), a pricing parameter that draws the index of traded finished petroleum products in the region. While international oil prices plummeted to $78 per barrel last week, there had been initial signs of possible fresh round of upswing since Friday (November 10) as the spot price of international benchmark Brent crude climbed anew to $80 per barrel level.
Global oil producers, primarily Saudi Arabia, so far asserted that the collapse of oil prices had been mainly due to ‘market speculation’, but the real market fundamentals on the production side had not been fully factored in into market sentiments. Industry watchers similarly attributed last week’s nosedive in prices to the weaker-than-expected economic data in China, as that is seen signaling slowdown in global economic growth. To date, the most awaited development in oil markets is the scheduled meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and ally-producers (OPEC+) by November 26 – if that will precipitate any agreement of new wave of production cuts that they will be enforcing.
There are no clear indications yet what specific agenda the OPEC+ members would be coming up when it comes to output quota, hence until then, there are no expectations of major events affecting oil prices in the days and weeks ahead.
Source: mb.com.ph
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