By HERBERT VEGO
YESTERDAY morning, a TV newscaster broke the good news that gasoline and diesel prices would decrease by a peso. The reduction was allegedly in response to the “world market.”
So what’s new? When the price goes up, it’s also attributed to the “world market.” How come? Why peg a new price on left-over stock?
I could not figure out a logical answer. But it’s quite evident that the rise and fall of premium gas prices keep it within the P58-to-P60-per liter level here in Iloilo, or lower by P5 always in Metro Manila. There is definitely cartelization, which the government ignores.
Times have changed! I remember that when I was a high-school student moonlighting as jeepney conductor during summer vacations in the 1960s, regular gas cost a steady 30 centavos per liter nationwide for four years.
It’s a pity that today, Malacañang and the Department of Energy (DOE) conspire with Petron, Shell, Caltex (a. k. a. the Big Three) and the so-called “small oil players” in fixing prices to the max – obviously for millions of “reasons.”
I remember how the local oil cartel pulled the “biggest swindle” a few years ago when United States President Barack Obama announced that Arab terrorist Osama bin Laden had gone to kingdom come. That news prompted the local oil cartel to jack up gas prices by an average of P1.50, or a total of P62 per liter of premium gas here in Iloilo on mere hunch that Bin Laden’s death would shake the “world market.”
Alas, on the contrary, the world market responded the other way. It turned out that the world market reflected the opposite trend. In the United States, a friend from Dallas, Texas e-mailed me, gasoline had slid down to 85 cents per liter.
Without saying sorry, the oil cartel reduced gas prices by an illusory 50 centavos. Yes, “illusory” because the small cut paled in comparison to the P1.50 hike they had already imposed for no valid reason
In other words, when they do “roll back,” it could be in the wake of an earlier and much higher price hike; akin to “two steps forward, one step backward” or, worse, “three steps forward, one step backward.”
To this day, we can just imagine the undeserved windfall that the conspirators make from selling old stocks of oil products at higher prices.
It is next to impossible today to opt for cheaper regular gas, as distinguished from the special or premium blend. It is no longer available in the cities but is “hidden” in very few gas stations in remote towns.
Since the senatongs and tongressmen have so far ignored public clamor to repeal the oil deregulation law, we are afraid it’s no longer a question of why but of “how much.”
The PNoy government can’t be expected to behave differently from its GMA predecessor vis-a-vis the oil problem. As it was in the GMA era, the PNoy era also thrives on oil taxes.
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We would like to apologize once more to fellow journalist Nestor Burgos and the Philippine Daily Inquirer for the inadvertent, verbatim reproduction last Friday of his news on graft cases filed against former TESDA director-general Augusto “Boboy” Syjuco.
The un-by-lined material had come in the e-mail at a time when we were in Boracay and had no idea that it had been published in another paper. Our intention was to use it as reference material only, but we erred in using it instead of the one written by our reporter.
Again, we apologize for the mistake./PN
