Philippines—Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras Tuesday admitted that the task force formed jointly by the Department of Energy (DoE) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) lacked teeth since it could not penalize oil companies that made unreasonable price adjustments.
According to Almendras, it will take 10 to 15 days before the DoE-DoJ task force could process the replies of the oil companies, which include Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and several small oil players.
The energy chief said that so far, the fuel price increases—except the one implemented last week—were justified.
“Every week, we determine the amount of increase based on world oil prices. If (oil companies) move within that range, then there is no basis to call on them. But what happened last week, the increase was more than what we calculated,” he said.
Meanwhile, Almendras balked at the idea of freezing fuel prices at a certain level, saying that this will cause supply disruptions.
“What can we do when the oil companies tell us they want to back out? I’ve already spoken to three Middle Eastern oil companies to invite them to venture into the local downstream oil industry. They only asked what happened to Aramco,” Almendras said.
“We are not protecting the oil companies. We are carrying out our mandate to ensure the country’s energy security. We have no oil resources and we need to import from the world oil market and they dictate oil prices. And we ensure that local oil price adjustments are not higher than the increase in world oil prices,
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