Thursday, January 08, 2009 Commuters hope for another oil price rollback By Jerson O. Coronica
THE United Negros Drivers Operators Center Inc. (Undoc) is hoping for another oil price rollback within this month after the Department of Energy (DOE) said rollbacks would be implemented soon amid the continuous oil price decrease in the world market.
Undoc secretary-general Jessie Ortega said they stood pat on their clamor for a P26 per liter. Current oil prices are playing around P33 per liter after the last rollback effected last year.
Ortega said they will continue asking for an immediate rollback as long as they feel the big three – Petron, Shell and Caltex – will continue ignoring the public’s plea for lower oil prices.
Amid the series of rollbacks late last year, Undoc, which has over 7,000 members in Negros Occidental, decided to implement a P0.50 rollback in passenger’s fare. It said it would never hesitate to lower fare by another P.50 as long as oil price would become P26 per liter.
Ortega said while the world market shows clearly how big was the slash in oil prices, “the big three somehow pretend they don’t see the reality and as if nothing happens, continue selling oil at high prices. In fact, it took only five months for the price of oil to plummet from $150 to under $40 in the second part of the year.”
Oil-price.net shows that the current price of oil per barrel is now $40.08, lower by almost $110.per barrel compared to June last year.
Meanwhile, the United States of America was ranked as the number 1 oil importer last year, pegged at 11.8 millions of barrels being imported per day. The US is followed by Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, France, Italy, Spain, India and Taiwan.
Saudi Arabia topped the world’s oil exporting country, with an average of 8.3 millions of barrels exported per day. It also has the world’s largest oil reserves, reaching to about 262 billion of barrels since 2005 as per report.
