WHAT is immediately palpable in the top-level tussles over the unstable prices of oil is the troubled growl over our economy’s inability to find assurance of strength and stability.

Reports said yesterday that oil prices hovered near $77 a barrel in Asia after a big fall during a previous trading session, when investors noted volatility of the dollar with the emerging figures about the United States economy.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

Two disastrous natural calamities had hit central and northern Luzon, catching unaware thousands of rich and poor families alike.

To prevent undue rises in the price of oil products, government issued an oil price freeze order at levels way below the current ones.

Affected oil firms, while obeying, warned of the possibility of oil shortage.

Losses

While it is sound administration policy to act in favor of public interest, it is also demoralizing to concerned business entities in so far as it affects their business viability.

Oil prices, it should be noted, is determined by the price of the basic raw material at source.

Oil being imported means the price was fixed elsewhere.

Thus, it is understandable that players of the oil industry are objecting to the price freeze and expressing concern over a possible shortage of oil products.

While the instability of domestic oil prices may have led to the government’s freeze order, a Manila economist said the order did not consider the global increase of oil prices which have gone up to well over $70 per barrel in recent weeks.

Hence, forcing a price freeze could lead to losses that would have to be recouped later on through even higher prices than would normally be warranted then.

Concern

The country’s business community, along with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, is said to have jointly expressed concern that “such misplaced price fixing will be a deterrent to future investments by both domestic and foreign investors.”

This means that the prospects of having more jobs from new business operations would practically be nil.

Besides, increase in cost of refining crude oil has negated fixing prices at lower levels.

This becomes doubly worrisome with the report yesterday that the US consumer spending and confidence had fallen.

This has reportedly caused the benchmark crude for December delivery, earlier quoted to be “down 11 cents, to $76.89 a barrel,” to fall by $2.87 to settle on $77, thus making December’s gas costlier.