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“It has been a big mystery to me how the oil
companies manage to announce nearly identical prices at almost the
same time, although their cost structures are different,” said
Golez.
Less than two days after raising
the price of diesel by three pesos per liter, major oil companies
announced last Sunday a price rollback by P1.50 in response to
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s appeal.
“We are hoping that this will
be the last appeal,” said Fernando Martinez, chair and chief
executive of Eastern Petroleum Corp. “Right now, we can still
handle it, but there’s a saturation point. There may come a time
when we can no longer handle it.”
It was like telling
President, “OK, we accommodate you now, but this is the last
time,” as if the oil firms had done her a big favor. The President
has been virtually begging them to roll back the price of diesel,
and she gets a reply like that? That she should stop making any
further pakiusap (request)?
Why should the President,
morally disturbed by the suffering of her people from the unending
increase in oil prices, stoop down to beg the oil companies to
reduce their prices? Why can she not order them? Because the oil
deregulation law insulates the oil giants from any governmental
control in the determination of oil prices.
Since the law came into effect
some 10 years ago, the oil companies have been making money hand
over fist—with impunity. Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said Shell and
Petron alone have made a net profit of nearly P70 billion—P35.18
for Petron and P33.59 billion for Shell. Chevron made a net profit
of P2.75 billion two years ago. It is assumed that the other oil
firms also made substantial profits.
The oil giants could have been
milking the general public dry but nobody, not even the President,
can control their insatiable appetite for money because of the
deregulation law.
A special task force created by
the President started the other day looking into allegations that
the oil companies had been “manipulating” retail prices almost
every week. But Justice Undersecretary Jose Vicente Salazar said
that so far, his group had found “no sign of violation of any of
the laws against predatory overpricing, cartelization and unfair
competition” by the oil companies.
The House senior deputy minority
leader, Rep. Roilo Golez, raised the issue of overpricing to the
Commission on Audit (COA) the other day, asking the agency to look
into the books of the “Big Three”—Petron, Pilipinas Shell and
Chevron Philippines—to see if there were indications of
“collusion” between and among them against the public interest.
In a House resolution, Golez
stressed the need for a public audit by the COA of the financial
operations of the oil firms. He was strongly suspicious that the
companies were consulting each other on price movements.
“It has been a big mystery to
me how the oil companies manage to announce nearly identical prices
at almost the same time, although their cost structures are
different,’ said Golez.
He was joined by Bayan Muna Rep.
Teodoro Casino in urging Congress to compel the oil companies to
“open their books and reveal their mysterious pricing
mechanism.” Casino railed at the oil firms for their “whimsical
and arbitrary manner” of setting oil prices.
Since January, the price of
diesel has been raised 22 times for a cumulative increase totaling
P24. Petulant members of the Gabriela Women’s Party demonstrated
recently against the Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. by pelting its
office in Makati City with their rubber slippers.
This week, a series of rallies
will be carried out by angry protesters at the offices of the major
oil companies in condemnation of the unending increase in oil
prices. Similar protests will be staged by militant groups in the
provinces.
In its recent appeal to the
President, the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines (CBCP) called for
a review of the oil deregulation law, citing the government’s
apparent helplessness to control the prices of gasoline and other
petroleum products.
Several consumer groups have
echoed the same appeal, blaming the deregulation law as the root of
all their social and economic woes. The prohibitive price of
gasoline has generated an increase in the costs of rice and other
prime commodities, transportation fare, water and electric services,
tuition fees and housing.
The law has been with us for the
past 10 years, enriching the big players in the oil industry. But
there has been no determined effort by the government to repeal it.
Why?
Congress should have taken the
lead in filing a bill to repeal a law that has made the people groan
under rising oil prices and the government powerless to remove the
cause.
agr0324@yahoo.com
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