Stop escalating oil prices -- lawmakers

MILITANT solons have called on the government to implement measures to lower the prices of oil in this time of pandemic.

Bayan Muna Reps. Carlos Isagani Zarate, Ferdinand Gaite and Eufemia Cullamat   expressed alarm on the weekly increase of oil prices which is affecting the return of businesses.

The three said that aside from urgently repealing the TRAIN law, oil prices can be lowered further in the long term by enacting three  legislative measures that will free the country from the stranglehold of the oil cartel.

The three proposals are the regulation of the downstream oil industry, the centralized procurement of oil and the government buyback of Petron.

These proposals should be part of the new normal scheme, they said.

Bayan Muna and other members of the Makabayan bloc filed House Bill 4711 to renationalize PETRON, House Bill 244 to regulate the downstream oil industry and House Bill 4712 or the centralized procurement of petroleum in the country. The group is calling on the House leadership to fast track these bills to shield Filipinos from the escalating oil price hikes.

“Up to 95 percent of the country’s petroleum requirements are imported, rendering the country exceedingly vulnerable to the dictates of big transnational corporations. The worst implication of this is that our severe dependence on such corporations, which control not only the importation, refining, and retailing of crude and petroleum products from abroad, but also control the exploration, exploitation, refining, retailing, and even re-exportation of our country’s indigenous petroleum and petroleum-based products,"  Zarate said.

As for the centralized procurement of oil, the Big Three, or the local subsidiaries of Shell and Caltex and Petron, claim that they do not overprice, that they set prices based on the price increases of Dubai oil exchanged over the spot market and on peso-dollar exchange rate fluctuations, they stressed.

Cillamat deplored the "already obvious existence of a cartel" and allegation they merely follow the movements of world oil prices. "This misleading claim though is belied by the fact that they are minimally affected by prices in world markets and even as they are able to trade in the same currency between subsidiaries,” Cullamat said.

“Furthermore, our dependence on imported petroleum and petroleum products has continually depleted our foreign currency reserves, which has caused the further devaluation of the peso and has made importation more and more expensive.  So the logical solution for this is to institute a centralized procurement system of all imported crude oil and refined petroleum products, which includes the creation of buffer supplies to cushion consumers against drastic increases in petroleum prices,” Gaite added.