INDEPENDENT oil player Jetti Petroleum Inc. said on Friday it will refute the P4.1-billion technical-smuggling charge filed against it by the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
Jetti has yet to receive the complaint but its president, Joselito Magalona, said the board of directors and officers assured customers, shareholders, dealers, suppliers, creditors and partners of the company will fight the “baseless” charge.
“Jetti will, accordingly, spare no effort to protect the good name and business reputation it has carefully built and nurtured over the years from any erroneous or malicious imputation of wrongdoing,” Magalona said.
He said Jetti Petroleum was consulting its legal advisers on the steps it would undertake. He said Jetti was not, in any way, involved in smuggling and that it has no unpaid obligations to the government.
Jetti has been a law-abiding and responsible corporate citizen and taxpayer, he said; it has never been involved or implicated in any illegal activity.
In another development, Chevron Philippines Inc., Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., and Total (Philippines) Corp. raised the price of premium and unleaded gasoline by 70-centavo per liter and diesel and kerosene by 25-centavo per liter on Friday morning.
Petron Corp. said it will increase unleaded and premium gasoline prices by P1.60 per liter and diesel and kerosene by 95-centavo per liter also on Friday morning.
The latest price increases were the second last week after oil companies increased premium and unleaded gasoline rates by 90-centavo per liter and diesel and kerosene by 70-centavo per liter, citing the increase in world oil prices the previous week.
Roberto Kanapi, Pilipinas Shell vice president for communications, earlier said it will look into increasing the frequency of implementing price adjustments to at least twice a week, in order to timely reflect changes in the international oil markets and foreign exchange, thus promoting greater pricing transparency.
“Through more frequent and timelier adjustments, we aim to help cushion the impact of higher oil prices to the public,” Kanapi said.
As part of the deregulation process, Kanapi said Shell constantly assesses the needs of consumers and look at ways to best address them.
According to an oil price monitoring, sources the average price of Dubai crude increased by $3 to $110 per barrel on September 1 from $107 per barrel on August 29.
The average price of Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS)-based unleaded gasoline also increased by $5 to $131 per barrel on September 1 from $126 on August 29, while the average price of MOPS-based diesel also increased by $3 to $129 per barrel on September 1 from $126 per barrel on August 29.
As of September 5, the monitoring also noted that the average price of Dubai crude, MOPS-based unleaded gasoline and MOPS-based diesel indicated a reduction at $107 per barrel, $128 per barrel and $126 per barrel, respectively.
