Shell, Phoenix to roll back prices Tuesday

At least two oil companies — Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and Phoenix Petroleum Philippines Corp. — will cut their pump prices Tuesday, December 18, as prices in the international front continue to drop. Shell and Phoenix were the first ones to announce their price rollback of 80 centavos per liter for diesel, 20 centavos per liter for regular and unleaded gasoline, and 55 centavos per liter for kerosene. According to Energy oil industry management bureau director Zenaida Monsada, more price rollbacks may ensue if the prevailing weak demand persists in the early days of next year. Aside from weak demand causing global oil prices to temper, the strengthening of the peso also helped eased up domestic oil prices. She also said the domestic oil price trend would also be dependent on how the Europe, US economies would behave. Monsada said if there would be supply disruption in the Middle East, it would also take its toll on local market. Price monitoring Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said they would be coming up with an updated oil price monitoring, as well as other pertinent information, on the Department of Energy (DOE) website to ensure transparency in pricing in the local oil industry. "We are hoping to come up with information that we could share to the public. All data that would be furnished to DOE, we will be putting them at our website for everybody to see," he said. He said the updated version of the oil price monitoring of DOE would include comparative prices in the provinces and in Metro Manila. Petilla believes the transparency in oil and power pricing would lead to less confusion among the general public, the government and the private sector. — KBK, GMA News