Constant Weekend Rise at the Gas Pump

[mikmik316]

Had checked wikis to prove my point...

The government owns 40% of Petron... They can choose to limit their income by 5-10%...

The government owns part of Malampaya... They can choose to speed up the drilling & production of oil...

The government imposes taxes... They can at least remove those taxes INSTEAD of subsidizing only a small number of the population...

The government imposes a maximum on Meralco for their net income... how come this is not done for the oil industry?

The government by mandate of law should enforce that Shell & Caltex should be listed in the stock exchange, should transfer their facilities from Pandacan to somewhere else... The government can pressure them to abide or pay a penalty, that is, lower their prices or go out of business...

The government can promote the use of LPG by helping public utility vehicles (taxis) thru subsidy or assistance... instead, government will try to enforce PUVs (jeepneys) to convert to Isuzu diesel so as to pass the clean air act...

The government can also require everyone to convert thru the use of flex-fuel engines & more ethanol-use bringing gas to super unleaded E85... Brazil has succeeded doing that... ethanol production only requires sugar cane & corn which i think can be abundantly produced here...

Heck, even the government can take over companies as a matter of protecting national security in times of emergencies... If that is still allowed by the constitution...

So what has the government done for us lately???????

[pinkerton]

baket lagi kino-compare ang fuel price sa Pinas sa fuel price sa Dubai or Saudi?

Syempre mura sa Dubai or Saudi... una, oil producer sila. Galing po sa ilalim ng lupa nila yan. 2nd, highly subsidized sila.

Halos walang puhunan para sa kanila para gumawa ng gasolina o diesel. (since the crude oil that comes out of the ground is free, all they have to spend on is refining the crude oil)

E tayo, customer tayo. Bumibili tayo. Binebenta sa atin ang crude oil na yan at around $130 per barrel.

Kelangan bumili ng dollars ang mga oil companies dito para may pambayad. Magkano dollar ngayon?

Malaki ang puhunan ang kelangan para makabili ng isang tanker na puno ng crude oil.

Tapos ang tanker na yan na puno ng crude oil binibiyahe papunta sa Pinas.

Sa pamasahe palang magkano na?

Tapos pagdating dito ng crude oil, ire-refine ng mga oil companies para maging unleaded, diesel, kerosene...

Tapos nilalagay sa tanker trucks para ideliver sa mga gas stations.

Konting imagination at common sense nga...

sa lahat ng expenses na yan...

Paano magiging kasing presyo ng fuel dito sa Pinas sa presyo ng fuel sa Saudi o Dubai?

how 'bout this case in point

intel philippines manufactured a greater fraction of the world's microprocessor chips here in the Phils. other big manufacturers had their plants here like GE, car manufacturers like Honda, Nissan and Ford.

pero mas mahal pa din ang Intel Processor, Civic, Escape, CRV, GE cordless phones dito sa'tin

pano naman i-explain ito?

[slamtaz]

how 'bout this case in point

intel philippines manufactured a greater fraction of the world's microprocessor chips here in the Phils. other big manufacturers had their plants here like GE, car manufacturers like Honda, Nissan and Ford.

pero mas mahal pa din ang Intel Processor, Civic, Escape, CRV, GE cordless phones dito sa'tin

pano naman i-explain ito?

magbigay lang po ako ng 3 basic reasons sa aking pag-kakaalam (i.e. marami po kasing dahilan at detalye kung ating hihimayin ng husto)

ang langis po sa saudi ay ganito:

raw materials = free
building & machineries = government owned/subsidized
tax = dahil po self sufficient ang gobyerno due to oil, could be none or very low

basic effect - dahil halos walang puhunan at kahit ipamigay locally ang langis, ang gobyerno po ay kumikita ng sapat to run the country.

ang produkto po ng mga multi-national GE, Honda, Intel etc sa pilipinas ay ganito:

raw materials = majority content ay imported meaning $$$
building & machineries = company owned meaning $$$
tax= dahil po tila yata walang national product to sell at pagkakitaan ang gobyerno, heavily taxed ang mga products na ito sold locally.

basic effect - dahil po napakalaki ng puhunan na kailangang bawiin ng mga multinational companies at pati na din yung kanilang tutubuin (profit) ay mataas ang presyo. lalo na pong tumaas dahil heavily taxed po ang mga produktong ito kapag ibenta locally, as a source of income for the government to hopefully run the country.

ang isa po kasi sa mga advantage sa pagtatayo ng manufacturing hub ng mga multi-national companies sa ating bansa ay:

for the multinational companies = good location for a regional manufacturing hub and relatively cheaper labor than their home countries (e.g. sa Intel, ang US labor of about $52/day or roughly php2,340/day while sa pinas ay less than php400/day pa din yata)

for the host country = provides jobs to its citizenry and source of tax paid by these companies.

akin lang pong :twocents:

[Monseratto]

Oil players not ruling out another price hike this weekend

MANILA, Philippines - Barely a day after Malacañang announced a P1.50/liter rollback in diesel prices, oil industry players admitted they are not ruling out another price hike this coming weekend.

Fernando Martinez, president of the Independent Philippine Petroleum Corporation Association (IPPCA), said that if just one firm hikes prices, all the others are likely to follow.

"Ngayong weekend di tayo nakakatiyak kung meron pang maglalakas-loob dahil karo-rollback lang (This weekend we cannot say for sure if any of the players will hike prices again, in the wake of Sunday's rollback)," Martinez said in an interview on dwIZ radio.

Sunday's rollback came barely a week before President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is to deliver her State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Martinez said oil firms still have at least P4/liter to recover due to the skyrocketing of world oil prices in past months.

He also noted that less than a week after a special P1/liter rollback for gasoline, oil firms promptly hiked gas prices the next weekend.

"Yan ay isang palaisipan. Alam mo na, deregulated ang industriya, di natin malaman kung may maglalakas-loob pa ngayong weekend na magtaas (That is a puzzle. You know the industry is deregulated. So we are keeping an eye on each other to see who raises prices first)," he said
of the possibility of another price hike this weekend.

On the other hand, he reiterated he is not in favor of suggestions to impose a major "one-time" price hike, saying it will not favor the customer.

Earlier, militant groups scored as a "calculated political move" Malacañang's announcement of a P1.50/liter rollback in diesel prices.

The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (bayan) said the rollback smacks more of a "deferred price hike" that will be "recouped" in the next price hike, which is likely to take place next weekend.

"Malacañang will of course take credit for the so-called rollback since it desperately wants to score brownie points just before President Arroyo delivers her State of the Nation Address one week from now. Arroyo is reeling from plummeting approval ratings due to her regime's inability to control oil prices and lift the VAT on oil," Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr said.

"The people will come out on July 28 to render judgment on Arroyo and to expose the real 'state of the nation,'" he added.

Reyes said the P1.50/liter oil price rollback is a farce and is aimed at defusing public outrage over the non-stop oil price increases and the Value Added Tax on oil.

"The P1.50/liter 'rollback' will be recouped by the oil companies in a matter of days, or during their next increase which is likely five days from now," he said.

He noted that earlier in the month, oil companies similarly announced a P1/liter rollback only to raise prices by P1.50/liter two days later.

Reyes said people will not fall for such a "zarzuela" being performed by the Palace and the greedy oil monopolies, adding this "show" has all the signs of political desperation.

"Because the deregulation law is still in place, oil companies will continue to raise prices with impunity. And since the VAT is also in place, consumers will have to bear the burden of unjust taxation," he said. - GMANews.

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/108144/O...e-this-weekend

[uls]

Ganda ng explanation ni Slamtaz

[Eismann]

Tsk...tsk....tsk...true government austerity measures should start within and minus the politicking........less travel, chop or do away with the pork barrel for legislators, run after tax evaders/illegal businesses to raise revenues so we can create a stabilizing fund for imported oil or in expanding the reach of biofuels or developing alternative fuel from local sources - water, deuterium(easier said than done for now).

Can anyone make a forecast of the tipping point when world economies will collapse as brought by the surge/instabilty of oil cost?

[tidus1203]

No price hikes this week it seems except for Shell which will increase their diesel and kerosene by P1.50 (sino pa kaya magpapagas sa Shell kung ganun?). Hay in time for SONA I guess, nagpapagwapo lang ang adminstration but this is just delaying tactics...

[Monseratto]

Total joins Shell in increasing prices of diesel, kerosene - report

MANILA, Philippines - Total Philippines has joined Pilipinas Shell in raising the prices of diesel and kerosene by P1.50 a liter, radio dzBB reported on Saturday.

The report said the two companies increased the prices of their diesel and kerosene products on Saturday, 6 a.m.

Earlier in the day, a report from another radio station said three other oil firms - Petron Corporation, Chevron Philippines, and Flying V - did not join Shell in the latest increase in fuel prices.

Monitoring conducted by the Department of Energy as of July 21 showed that diesel products cost P55.98 to P57.97 per liter; kerosene - P59.41 to P63.30; unleaded gasoline - P59.10 to P61.57; and liquefied petroleum gas - P645 and P702.30 per 11-kilogram cylinder.

Earlier, Flying V chairman Ramon Villavicencio said that after August 3, his firm would determine if there would be a need to still push through with the increase of its petroleum products to reduce the company's under recoveries. - GMANews.TV

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/109546/T...osene---report

[Algernon]

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storyPage...storyId=126480

[SIZE=5][SIZE=4]Oil prices could drop if Iran concerns allayed: OPEC president [/SIZE]
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]Agence France-Presse[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]
[/SIZE][/SIZE][SIZE=2][SIZE=2]ALGIERS - The price of oil could drop to between 70 and 80 dollars a barrel if the dollar strengthens and concerns over Iran are reduced, OPEC chief Chakib Khelil said Saturday.[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]"If the dollar strengthens and if the crisis with Iran is resolved, the trend in oil prices should be to go towards 70 to 80 dollars," the head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said on the sidelines of a conference.[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]Khelil is also Algeria's Energy Minister.[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]Oil prices ended the week at around 125 dollars a barrel in London and New York. Crude oil prices have dropped by nearly 25 dollars on both sides of the Atlantic in less than two weeks.[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[uls]

yes traders love to use geopolitical tensions as an excuse to bid up the price of oil.

Konting balita lang na meron gulo sa isang oil producing country, traders take advantage agad.

That news about Israel preparing to attack Iran added a lot of upside pressure to the price of oil.

[Algernon]

http://business.inquirer.net/money/b...-in-oil-prices

[SIZE=6]Merrill Lynch forecasts downtrend in oil prices [/SIZE][SIZE=5]
[/SIZE] [SIZE=3]
Consumption decline seen pulling prices near $100[/SIZE]

[SIZE=1]By Doris Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 18:54:00 07/27/2008[/SIZE]

MANILA, Philippines--The world may have finally seen the worst of global oil price spikes and as nations scale back consumption of the scarce resource, prices will likely ease further to average at $107 a barrel next year, US investment banking giant Merrill Lynch said.

Stephen Corry, Hong Kong-based head of investment strategy at Merrill Lynch (Asia-Pacific) Ltd., said on Friday that commodity experts were beginning to see the balance between global oil demand and supply being restored, which would thus make it unlikely for prices to surge further toward $200 a barrel as feared by many.

As of Friday, oil prices based on the light, sweet crude or WTI benchmark was trading at about $122 a barrel, down from the record-high of close to $147 seen in previous weeks.

"The potential removal of oil subsidies in Asia and in other emerging markets will lead to demand restructuring. We've seen that in the US, with airlines cutting back, with transportation, shipping cutting their cruising speeds. These are all examples of demand restructuring," Corry said in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

"It's probably more evident here in the Philippines than anywhere else in the Asian region because there are no fuel subsidies here and oil consumption has fallen 10 percent (a year)," he said.

Unlike other countries in the region like India, Malaysia and Indonesia, the Philippines has deregulated the oil industry in the 1990s, scrapping fuel subsidies that weighed down government finances.

With the removal of oil subsidies, demand for erstwhile subsidized goods is expected to go down and consumers are seen better conserving supply.

"We think that oil prices have peaked and will be lower in the second half and will average at $107 a barrel for the whole of 2009. So the lower the oil prices, the better it is for the global economy," Corry said.

Merrill Lynch had projected that oil prices would peak at $150 a barrel, but Corry said the peak may have already been hit at the record highs posted in previous weeks.

[tidus1203]

And Merrill Lynch has a good history of making bad forecasts

[slamtaz]

And Merrill Lynch has a good history of making bad forecasts

hehehe naunahan mo ako dun ah...

[tidus1203]

Now if Goldman Sachs made the call I will be more attentive, Merrill is nothing

[uls]

it only takes a supply disruption somewhere (Nigeria, Iran, Gulf of Mexico...) to send oil back to $140 and beyond...

or further dollar collapse

or OPEC production cut

or war, or rumors of war in the middle east

or some big player in the commodities market suddenly buying up oil contracts (everyone watches what the big players are doing)

or cash on the sidelines rushing back into oil

etc

[Algernon]

Now this is most interesting...

Hey tidus, you wouldn't be left-leaning by any chance, would you? Hehehe...j/k!!

http://opinion.inquirer.net/viewpoin...-the-US-Dollar

[SIZE=5]Crisis, Oil and the U.S. Dollar [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]By Sylvia L. Mayuga
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 01:38:00 07/27/2008[/SIZE]

At the eve of another State of the Nation address to a skeptical Filipino citizenry, memory wanders back to the Foundation for Higher Consciousness and the Environment founded by the far-seeing Maximo Kalaw, Jr. in the 1970s. There a handful of his fellow Pinoys listened to New Age visionaries like Stanley Krippner and Hazel Henderson about a possible alternative future for the world and our ever shortchanged country in a paradigm shift. That phrase would become a global buzzword, like “renewable energy” that could leave our children a far more desirable Earth than the one we found – if we worked hard.

We did, but who was it who said that light wakes people but it takes heat to make them move? Nearly 40 years had to pass before the largest industrial nations finally admitted to their fossil-fueled pollution; and for windmills, solar panels and biofuels to arrive at the tail of global warming’s drought, hurricanes and storms, one more violent than the last. Time seems to be folding into itself as visions of the ‘70s return full strength, no longer as ideals but as imperatives to survival in multiple crises increasingly hostile to life.

Life is fighting back. This week heat arrived with light in an e-mail about a major element of crisis no Arroyo SONA is likely to mention this way. Titled “Why the U.S. dollar bubble is about to burst,” the short piece was unsigned, but it was forwarded by a trustworthy source, with Web links that allowed cross-checking.

This was no spam, I found. One by one the links led to the article’s original provocation – a brief comment by a Dr. Bulent Gukay of Keele University in the U.K., published in May 2006 by the Scottish socialist magazine called Voice. It linked oil and Iran, the U.S. dollar and the euro with a twist one rarely, if ever encounters in mainstream media.

An inviting detective’s trail had opened. I also found the source of the e-mailed article, bylined “Steve Masterson,” in the IndyMedia U.K. website. It had apparently expanded Dr. Gukay’s comment into a full-length piece posted a month later. Not surprisingly, it caught the interest of a global spectrum of readers, posted in 18 websites of fascinating variety – from the Russian Pravda and Novosti to Cebu City Today, from a Shia Islam website to a World Dap-ay Forum based in Baguio City.

The Web trail turned cold on author credentials, however, yielding nothing on Dr. Gukay’s career and persuasion, followed by inconsistency on Steve Masterson. (There seemed to be at least two with the same name.) Still, what they – and the experts they quote – have to say on the U.S. dollar, its role in global trade, war and peace, and now death by crisis turned out worth considering on their own merit.

Readers who have not yet realized how and why the U.S. dollar began its plunge and where all this could be going may find survival value in this review of world economic history with political underpinnings and environmental consequences.

One of the best links led to Cóilín Nunan, who has taken his background in math from the universities of Brussels, Oxford and Cambridge into social development work. Matching independent scholarship with humanism, he decries global media silence on strategic economic decisions by secretive governments that habitually leave vulnerable citizens out of the decision-making loop.

Two years before the present crises hit us all in the gut, Nunan wrote: “Should we not be debating more openly what kind (or kinds) of international financial structure (s) we want to adopt, since the question has potentially huge implications for the stability of the world economy and for peace and stability in oil-exporting countries?”

He jumpstarts such a debate with basic hard facts on the U.S. dollar for non-economists: “The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.

“This confers on the US a major economic advantage: the ability to run a trade deficit year after year. It can do this because foreign countries need dollars to repay their debts to the IMF, to conduct international trade and to build up their currency reserves.

“The US provides the world with these dollars by buying goods and services produced by foreign countries, but since it does not have a corresponding need for foreign currency, it sells far fewer goods and services in return, i.e. the US always spends more than it earns, whereas the rest of the world always earns more than it spends.”

Article writer Masterson follows Nunan’s trajectory: “This system of the US dollar acting as global reserve currency in oil trade keeps the demand for the dollar `artificially' high. This enables the US to carry out printing dollars at the price of next to nothing to fund increased military spending and consumer spending on imports. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of dollars that can be printed. As long as the US has no serious challengers, and the other states have confidence in the US dollar, the system functions.”

That said, from all our ringside seats on the tight embrace between a plunging dollar and the skyrocketing oil prices raining body blows on millions of lives worldwide, we begin learning how this horrific situation came about.

This is what one Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D has to say: “Economically, the American Empire was born with Bretton Woods in 1945. The U.S. dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating a significant portion of the world's gold.

“An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold.

“However, the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960's was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJ's Great Society. Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent U.S. trade deficits was tantamount to a tax -- the classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that (the) U.S. imposed on rest of the world.

“When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, the U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of ‘severing the link between the dollar and gold,’ in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire.

“It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond – the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it.”

All that happened from the 1940s to the ‘70s. There’s far more to learn as America, presently the planet’s largest polluter, began promoting “globalization” in the late ‘80s into the ‘90s.

You can imagine, dear reader, how one column is not enough space for even this summary of what else the whole planet urgently needs to know about oil, multiple crises and the U.S. dollar. We must continue this next week.

Meanwhile, I leave you with a paradigm shift of an interview with one of ailing superpower America’s healthiest cells – no, not Oprah but her scholarly activist elder, Hazel Henderson.

Respond to: slmayuga*yahoo.com

[tidus1203]

A little bit of OT but has something to do with rising oil prices:

Me leaning to the left? NEVER! I don't like populist ideas. But yes matagal na nating alam yan na the US is living in a world of debt and the world continues to accept their toilet paper as mode of payment while in reality it really has no value since they can just print as much as they want out of thin air... And all of this has something to do with rising prices of everything including oil. Ever wonder why as years past by prices always go up, ever wonder why 20 years ago cents had value but now they're worthless? Yan po ang sagot, the continues PRINTING OF MONEY! Kaya if you're smart stop treating it as money and be off to something more valuable like gold or real assets like land.

[uls]

and what do u do if u have a lot of dollars?

you look for some place to put your dollars so that it grows faster than the rate of inflation.

[Algernon]

The ironic thing is in spite of all his paper play money, the whole world still puts so much value in it, you can still buy so many thing of actual real value with it. So why do people still accept it so much? And when will the world wake up and start dumping such worthless money in exchange for more trustworthy and reliable currency?

And for those who have no faith in any currency at all, why is the world still using money in the first place? Why don't we all just go back to the barter system of trade? ;-)

[uls]

We use Fiat currency coz that's what it is -- fiat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

The terms fiat currency and fiat money relate to types of currency or money whose usefulness results, not from any intrinsic value or guarantee that it can be converted into gold or another currency, but only from a government's order (fiat) that it must be accepted as a means of payment

The government ordered us to ACCEPT the paper money printed by the central bank. So we did.

That's the way it is in every country in the world.

----------------

ya we can go back to barter...

everyone brings their assets everywhere to trade.

Like i bring my chicken everywhere looking for someone who wants to trade with me. Preferably someone who has rice and is looking for chicken. Para pareho kami may chicken meal hehe

Kaya ginawang money ang gold and silver coz carrying around chicken and goats and grains is kinda inconvenient.

Then people got tired of carrying around gold and silver coins coz mejo mabigat din.

People needed a place to keep their gold. So they asked the goldsmith if they can keep their gold in the goldsmith's vaults.

Ya sure said the goldsmith. The goldsmith then issued paper notes that state how much gold a depositor has entrusted to the goldsmith.

The depositor can use the receipt to redeem the gold anytime.

But the goldsmith noticed people rarely redeem their gold. They just use the paper notes to buy stuff with.

Tada! paper money!

And that was how banks began.

Diba bank notes tawag sa paper money natin?

Yun nga lang, we can't use our paper money to redeem gold.

Coz our paper money isnt backed up by gold.

It's backed up by thin air.

hehehe

---------------

BTW... the goldsmith created more paper notes without the additional gold deposits. He created money out of thin air. And he lent out the paper money... with interest!

What an diabolic idea! Yan ang fractional reserve lending.

That's the modern banking system.

What a scam.

hehehe