WORLD OIL PRICES (Aug 19-23, 2013 trading days)

Dubai crude was in mixed trend last week on uncertainty over when the U.S. Federal Reserve will scale-back its commodities-friendly bond-buying programme, continuing unrest in Egypt and reduced Libyan oil product supply. Signs of economic recovery in Europe and speculation that western governments may launch a military intervention in Syria also added to the price pick-up by the end of the week.

The oil market has been closely monitoring the Fed's debate on when to scale back its $85 a month bond buying programme. One concern of the market is that the shift will hit oil demand in key emerging economies like India, where the rupee has fallen sharply against the dollar in recent weeks. Generally, a strong dollar undermines oil prices because oil is traded in dollars and becomes more costly to non-dollar economies when the dollar rises.

Meanwhile, fresh signs of supply outages in Libya and unrest in Egypt helped curtail price losses. Libya was forced to suspend contractual obligations with a force majeure on some oil exports, acknowledging weeks of disruption which has cut shipments to their lowest since the civil war of 2011. On Egypt, it has been investor’s concern that civil unrest could spread throughout the Middle East, which pumps more than a third of the world's oil supply.

For the Asian oil products market, gasoline fundamentals were continuously weighed down by weak regional demand. Platts noted that the Asian market remained in a slump, following the end of peak demand season in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the start of monsoon rains in Vietnam that has curbed consumption. Weekly data showed a second consecutive million barrel jump in inventories in the regional storage hub. Stockpiles of light distillates jumped to a 13-week high of 10.234 million barrels as of last week’s data.

Likewise, the Asian gasoil/diesel market remained bearish amid thin regional demand and abundant supply coming from India and the Persian Gulf, Platts noted.

Week-on-week, Dubai crude rose by about US$1.40/bbl. On the other hand, MOPS gasoline and diesel slipped in the same period by about US$0.50/bbl US$0.17/bbl, respectively.

FOREX: Peso depreciated against the US dollar by P0.48 to 44.19, from P43.74 in the preceding 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, 27 August 2013, the oil companies implemented an increase of P0.60/L for gasoline and P0.55/L for diesel in Luzon.

It may be recalled that on 22 August 2013 an increase of P0.40/L for gasoline and P0.20/L for diesel was implemented only in Visayas and Mindanao. To complement the above-mentioned increase in Luzon, the oil companies implemented today an increase of P0.20/L for gasoline and P0.35/L for diesel in Visayas and Mindanao.

Including the said price adjustments, the year-to-date net increase in gasoline and diesel stands at P1.95 and P3.08, respectively.

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