What Is Happening With Our Gas Prices And What Can We Do About It?

Automologist Harold is concerned that people might survive COVID, but not the soaring gas prices. 

Everyone is scared about Covid. It has become the main menu for family discussions, friendly chats, company huddles and national policy fora, thanks to mainstream and social media for perpetuating the “Covid Fear”. People have forgotten about other important issues and the most urgent among them are soaring gas prices, closure of businesses, loss of jobs, curtailment of civil liberties and the 14 trillion business and opportunity losses caused by the pandemic.

In this article, let me just talk about the seemingly unstoppable rise in oil prices. In 2019, before the pandemic hit us, the average price of gasoline and diesel in the Philippines was in the P40-50 per litre. Today, it is at P60-70 per litre, which is a 40% increase in just 22 months! And if we believe the famous Covid forecaster Octa Research Group, in the next 2 years, our gas prices will be nearing the P100 per litre level. This is really scary. Gas prices are a major contributor to national inflation rates and runaway gas prices can lead to runaway inflation.

Two major factors contribute to rising gas prices: the value of the peso and the international oil prices. The Philippines is fortunate that the peso remained stable compared to pre-Covid 2019, but the global oil price has been soaring. As of writing, the price per barrel is in the USD80 range and oil analysts say that it may soar even higher to USD100 per barrel in the next few months. Is this because the oil-producing countries would like to recover their pandemic-triggered economic losses by “robbing” the oil-consuming countries with increased oil prices? Is this because the oil traders at Wall Street, who lost heavily because of the global transportation meltdown due to Covid lockdowns, would like to ride on the “robbing” bandwagon too?

I was told that writing about a problem without proposing a solution makes one just an alarmist, but writing with proposed solutions is called a catalyst. This writer at the very least proposes 3 Ps to address this gas price problem: Policy Response, Personal Mobility Changes and Product-Mitigating Techniques.

As a policy response, the Department of Energy and the Energy Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives must craft immediate measures to curtail the soaring prices. Maybe a review of the oil price stabilization law would be necessary.

As a personal mobility reform, I believe that people should begin using vehicles with low fuel consumption—owners of cars with 8-cylinder 5.7-liter engine displacement should now begin using more often their 4-cylinder 1.5-liter engine displacement cars. Some might want to shift to motorcycles. The best option of course are bicycles —it has zero gas cost.

And then there is a product-mitigating response. There is a product proven by research and endorsed by NASA that can reduce gasoline and diesel consumption by 10 to 15%. It is called the X-1R Engine Treatment, X-1R Petrol Decarbonizer and X-1R Diesel Decarbonizer. And, these are available in almost all franchised car dealers, Ace Hardware stores and Blade outlets nationwide. Just to let you know, about a million Filipino car owners have been using this product already. If you can’t control the price, at least you can reduce your consumption.

As for the other blatant problems I mentioned earlier, let us put to task our national economic managers and the political aspirants for the next election who are now making the political air noisy.