Pump prices down

MANILA, Philippines — Local oil companies are slashing pump prices today, including a more than P1 price rollback for diesel and kerosene.

In separate advisories yesterday, oil firms said prices would decline by P1.10 per liter for diesel and by P1.05 per liter for kerosene.

Gasoline prices, on the other hand, would drop by P0.45 per liter, ending three successive weeks of price increases.

The downward price adjustments, which reflect movement in the international oil market, will take effect at 6 a.m. today for most companies, except for Caltex and Cleanfuel which started implementing the price movements at 12:01 a.m.

The Department of Energy (DOE) attributed the price rollbacks to the contained situation of the Israel-Hamas war, additional crude production outputs from OPEC and the US and slowing fuel demand growth due to weakening global economic growth.

Last week, prices of diesel went down by P1.25 per liter and kerosene by P1.20 per liter, while gasoline prices increased by P0.45 per liter.

These adjustments resulted in a year-to-date net increase of P14.20 per liter for gasoline, P10.45 per liter for diesel and P5.04 per liter for kerosene, based on DOE data.

DOE monitoring from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3 showed that prevailing retail prices of diesel and diesel plus products in Metro Manila ranged from P58.25 to P70.90 per liter, and from P63.95 to P83.95 per liter, respectively.