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By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo, Reporter
SMALL oil companies said they are reaping
dividends from recent price cuts on fuel products.
Officials of Unioil Petroleum Philippines Inc.
and Eastern Petroleum Corp. said Friday that both firms are
“experiencing high sales” in majority of their retail stations
across the country in light of the P1-per-liter cut in fuel prices
implemented on Tuesday.
Unioil management said its “sales were doubled
in the last 36 hours” alone after motorists trooped to its gas
stations because of its lower prices.
Aside from Eastern Petroleum and Unioil, other
small oil players that reduced their prices are Flying V and Seaoil
Philippines. These small players comprise less than 10-percent of
the local petroleum retail market, which is largely dominated by the
Big Three of Petron Corp., Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and
Chevron Philippines Inc.
Their smaller rivals had also benefited from
improved sales when oil prices started hitting fresh records and
peaked in July.
Fernando Martinez, Eastern Petroleum chairman,
earlier said the company’s revenues are expected to increase by 43
percent year-on-year to P2 billion, after the high cost of crude
drove a number of small petroleum suppliers, specially those trading
illicitly, to close shop.
Francis Glenn Yu, Seaoil president, also said
the company’s revenues picked up this year without disclosing any
figure.
The small oil firms said they benefited from the
price cuts largely because their larger competitors, specifically
Petron, Shell, and Chevron, held off their own price reductions
until Saturday, triggering a number of protests from various groups
some of whom are calling for a “one time” price cut of P7 to P9
per liter to reflect the softening international price of crude.
Martinez said that oil firms would be hard
pressed to impose such a price cut as their inventories were bought
when oil prices were still high.
“It would be impossible to implement the one
time rollback,” he added.
Data from the Department of Energy showed that
as of Friday the average price of the benchmark Dubai crude has gone
down to $105.10 a barrel from $112.86 a barrel in August and $131.27
a barrel in July.
The price of imported gasoline has gone down to
$111.22 a barrel from $115.49 a barrel and $135.27 a barrel over the
same period, while diesel slipped to $127.23 a barrel from $135.26 a
barrel and $168.01 a barrel.
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