Oil firms see no local supply disruption

Philippine energy officials and oil firms continue to monitor the situation in the Middle East, but still with no panicked reactions as Dubai crude prices eased back down after the refinery attack in Saudi Arabia.

As of Sept. 19, the price of Dubai crude settled at $62.08 a barrel from $66.11 on Sept. 16, the first trading day after the attack. On Sept. 13, before the attack, Dubai fetched $58.58 a barrel.

The bombing took out of commission half of Saudi Arabia’s production capacity or 5 percent of global demand.

The two oil refiners in the Philippines—Petron Corp. and Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.—said they were taking efforts to ensure there would be no supply disruptions for the domestic market. Petron went so far as to say that there would be no disruption.

In the first half of 2019, the Philippines shelled out $6.05 billion for petroleum imports, a decrease of 8 percent from $6.6 billion in the same period last year.

In its latest semestral Oil Supply and Demand report, the Department of Energy said the decline was due to the combined effects of lower import cost and decreased volume of crude oil imports.

For crude oil alone, the country’s import bill dropped by 32 percent to $2.03 billion from $3 billion previously.

In terms of volume, crude oil imports from January to June fell 30 percent to about 30 million barrels from 43 million barrels.

“The drop was attributed to the emergency and scheduled maintenance/turnaround of one of the local refinery [Petron’s] sometime in April,” the DOE said.

“Majority (74 percent) of the crude oil imports were sourced from the Middle East, of which 32 percent came from United Arab Emirates, replacing Saudi Arabia as top supplier of crude oil into the country,” the DOE said.

During the six-month period, 26 percent of crude oil imports came from Kuwait; 12 percent from Russia, and 9 percent from Southeast Asia. A total of 2 percent of crude oil shipments came from Australia, Taiwan and South Korea.

Last week, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said “impact to prices, if any, may be felt by Tuesday [this] week” or Sept 24. —RONNEL W. DOMINGO