WORLD OIL PRICES (June 22-28, 2013 trading days)

After a series of increases, Dubai crude oil price dropped by more than $5 from last week's highest to below US$100/bbl starting last Monday, 24 June 2013, on concerns that the U.S. Federal Reserve will soon reduce its monetary stimulus.

The declines were exacerbated by worries over attempts by China, the world's second biggest oil consumer after the United States, to restraint in excessive credit growth. Reports say that policy makers in China are unlikely to inject more stimuli into the economy this time, as Beijing is looking to rebalance the same. China’s stance will likely have an impact on the manufacturing activity and may further trim the country’s oil demand in the second half of the year, analysts noted.

However, the gloomy demand outlook stemming from fears of a liquidity crunch in China was overshadowed as prices slowly recovered by the end of the week, subsequent to the announcement from the Federal Reserve governors that the U.S. central bank is in no rush to curtail its massive bondbuying programme.

Continued turmoil in Libya and other oil-producing regions and a North Sea outage also lent support to crude prices.

Meanwhile, Platts stated that with the impact of the recent outage at Melaka II refinery already priced in the tight supply-demand balance, the regional market has loosely followed gasoline futures that were lower in recent days.

On the other hand, fundamentals for Asian gasoil/diesel further tightened by the end of the week, with middle distillate stocks in Singapore, the region's largest trading hub, dropping to a near one-year low amid steady demand from the Middle East and Indonesia. Stocks of kerosene and gasoil in Singapore fell by 881,000 barrels week on week to 8.446million barrels for the week ended June 26. The drawdown in Singapore's stocks was reportedly attributed to increased exports and lower imports.

Overall, Dubai crude dropped week-on-week by about US$3/bbl. MOPS gasoline and diesel also slumped in the same period by about US$2.50 and US$1.80 per barrel, respectively.

FOREX: Peso depreciated against the US dollar by P0.12 to P43.47 last week, from P43.35 in previous week.

Other recommended reference sites:
(1) http://www.aip.com.au/pricing (2) http://www.med.govt.nz/ers/oil_pet/prices/prices.html

DOMESTIC OIL PRICES

Effective today, 1 July 2013, most of the oil companies implemented a decrease of P0.55/liter for gasoline and P0.45/liter for diesel.

Year-to-date, gasoline and diesel stands at a net increase of P1.20/liter and P1.03/liter, respectively.

For LPG, the Contract Price (CP) for July increased by US$29/MT to US$791.50/MT, from US$762.50 in June. This translates to an estimated increase of P2.84/kg (VAT inclusive) in the domestic market.

To-date, most of the LPG companies have not yet notified their adjustments except Isla Gas who advised DOE of its increase of P2.80/kg (VAT inclusive) effective today, 01 July 2013.

For more information, call the

Department of Energy:
Pricing: 840-2187
LPG: 840-2130
Fuels: 840-5669
SMS: (0915) 4469421
Email:  oilmonitor@doe.gov.ph
Website: http://www.doe.gov.ph