After last week’s brief price hike, local oil players implemented a decrease in the cost of petroleum products, following the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies’ (OPEC+) announcement that the output cuts will only be extended up to March next year.
According to the Department of Energy (DOE), the latest average Manila price per liter of gasoline (RON95) is at P52.40, diesel at P42.45 and kerosene at P47.17.
Petron decreased the per liter prices of gasoline and kerosene by P0.30 and diesel by P0.10 per liter.
Shell adjusted the prices of gasoline and kerosene downward by P0.40 per liter but has not implemented any price change for diesel.
Seaoil implemented a rollback in the cost of gasoline and diesel by P0.40 per liter and kerosene by P0.10 per liter.
Phoenix Petroleum also slashed prices by P0.30 per liter for gasoline and P0.10 per liter for diesel.
DOE said as of December 3, year-to-date adjustments stand at a net increase of P6.82 per liter for gasoline, P3.81 per liter for diesel and P0.94 per liter for kerosene.
Reuters reported that OPEC+ led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed last Thursday to cut output by an extra 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter of 2020 but has not decided what to do next beyond March next year.
Notably, countries involved in the said deal pumped over 40 percent of the world’s oil and their new combined cuts amount to 1.7 million bpd or 1.7 percent of global production.
Gary Ross, founder of Black Gold Investors, claimed that the extended output cut will effectively cause a “$60 to $65 Brent oil price in the seasonally weak period of next year.”