There is a “big chance” that fuel prices would continue to decrease until the end of the year, the Department of Energy (DOE) said Monday.

Rino Abad, director of the DOE’s Oil Industry Management Bureau made this forecast after announcing a huge rollback in pump prices which will be implemented on Tuesday morning.

Diesel is expected to decrease by P3 per liter, gasoline by P50 per liter, and kerosene by P2 per liter.

“We cannot say this is absolute, but there is a big chance that fuel prices will continue to go down,” Abad told the “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” briefing.

“The price went as high as $93 per barrel in October while the Dubai cude is now $80 to 81 per barrel. There really was a huge decrease. Before the production cut of Saudi and Russia in April, the prices of crude ranged from $77 to 78,” he said.

“The demand and supply situation is good and we are not expecting anything. I hope there won’t be any changes done by the OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus) and we hope the conflict in the Middle East won’t become an actual disruption so that we can experience lower prices until the end of the year,” he added.

Citing reports on oil, Abad attributes the major rollback in pump prices to the weakening of China’s manufacturing activity which corresponds to it lessening its fuel consumption.

“This means that they (China) started using less crude oil. It has been a while since we observed an actual supply disruption due to the Middle East conflict, specifically in Israel. So the conflict has no clear effect on the market. There is no reason for oil prices to rise and continue to rise because there is no decrease in production of oil happening there, specifically in the seven flyers in the Persian Gulf,” Abad said.

“All of that resulted in a better production of oil supply, the demand is also decreasing, and there are no problems regarding the supply in relation to the Middle East conflict,” he added. Jaspearl Tan/DMS