Philippines : Eastern Petroleum Highlights International Fuel Pricing

  The head of oil firm Eastern Petroleum Corp. this week rejected calls by a transport group to slash the prices of fuel and diesel by P11.

Eastern Petroleum president Fernando Martinez branded as unreasonable the demand of transport group PISTON to implement an P11 rollback instead of the weekly P1 reduction in the fuel prices. He said local fuel prices are determined by the movement of oil prices in the international market.

“Maybe we could lower our fuel prices by P11 if the Dubai crude cost fell to $80 per barrel and the peso value strengthened to P40 a dollar. That was the situation in January of this year. Besides, [PISTON secretary general George San Mateo] already knows that it is hard for us to give what they are asking,” Martinez said in an interview with local media.

He said he and officials of other oil firms have already explained this to transport groups during their meeting called by the Department of Energy. Martinez said Eastern Petroleum will reduce the prices of its petroleum products as world oil cost goes down.

As of August of this year, Martinez said Eastern Petroleum had already reduced its fuel and diesel prices by P5.50 and P3.50, respectively. He did not say if the company will implement another price adjustment.

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