Petron regains market leadership

Publicly-listed Petron Corp. has regained its market leadership from Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. for the first five months of the year.

Data from the Philippine Institute of Petroleum (PIP) obtained by The STAR showed that for the period January to May, Petron cornered a 33.3-percent share of the oil market compared to Shell’s 32 percent.

In the same period last year, Petron, partly-owned by the government, was second only with 33.5 percent as against Shell’s 33.7 percent. In terms of sales per barrel, Petron sold some 16.203 million barrels in the first five months of 2002 compared to 15.575 million barrels sold by Shell.

For the month of May alone, Petron was able to sell 3.66 million barrels of oil per day or 35 percent share of the market versus Shell’s 33.3 million barrels or 31.7 percent.

One of the three largest oil refiners in the country, Caltex Philippines Inc. remained at the third slot with 22 percent share of the market for the period January to May 2002, slightly higher than 21.4 percent in the same period last year.

New oil players, meanwhile, continued to increase their share of the oil industry market with 12.8 percent share for the five-month period in 2002, as against 11.5 percent in the comparative period in 2001.

During the period under review, there was a slight reduction in the country’s oil demand to 48.72 million barrels from 50.09 million barrels in 2001.

In a recent PIP-sponsored forum, Fereidun Fesheraki, an oil expert from the University of Hawaii, said the demand in the Philippine oil industry would continue to be weak. Aside from an expected decline in sales volume, the oil expert said local oil companies will be faced with various challenges such as: half-hearted deregulation, political grandstanding and prospects of serious government intervention; and adjusting to environmental regulation.

But Fesheraki said the oil players and the government should give the deregulated system a time to stabilize. The oil expert also pointed out that the Philippines is a very small player in the world oil market (only 1.4 percent of the Asia-Pacific consumption) and the country’s total consumption is smaller than the smallest refinery in Korea.

"The demand is so small. There is no real reason for the local industry to panic about supply. There are some frequent supply spikes but this will result in high prices but not necessarily supply shortage," he said.