Saturday, September 06, 2008 Small oil firms benefit from rollback
INDEPENDENT oil players admitted that they benefited from the oil price rollback they imposed last Tuesday.
Eastern Petroleum and Unioil Petroleum Philippines, Inc. (UPPI) said their sales went up after the major oil players - Petron Corporation, Pilipinas Shell and Chevron Philippines - had been reluctant in rolling back the pump prices of their petroleum products since Tuesday.
The three oil giants however have already announced that they would reduce their prices on Saturday.
According to Leah Flor, UPPI corporation communications officer, their sales “doubled in the last 36 hours". She said motorists took advantage of the low prices of fuel that the independent oil companies implemented as a result of the continued softening of the prices in the world market.
Like Unioil, Eatern Petroleum president Fernando Martinez said their sales rose in all its outlets in the country due to the price rollback they imposed.
Martinez also said that if the world prices will remain low and continue to drop, they will expect more rollback in the prices of petroleum products.
However, he explained that allowing a one time-big time rollback would not be possible for the oil companies to implement.
He said oil firms have an inventory of 40 to 60 days and it would be possible that these reserves were purchased at the time that the prices were still reaching the US$140 per barrel, "therefore it would be impossible to implement the one-time rollback." (MSN/Sunnex)
