AFTER a series of rollbacks over the last two months of 2021, fuel prices on Saipan went up by 15 cents five days into the new year.
Mobil Oil Susupe filling station attendant Renato Noble serves a customer on Thursday.
Mobil Oil Marianas raised its prices Wednesday afternoon followed by Shell Marianas on Thursday morning.
The regular gas price went up to $4.96 a gallon from $4.81 a gallon; premium gas price to $5.41 a gallon from $5.26 a gallon; and diesel price to $5.23 a gallon from $5.08 a gallon.
Consumers have reacted to the first fuel price hike of the year.
Arnold Mendiola, a retiree, asks, “Why do we have to pay so much for gas when Singapore is just west of Saipan, and we are not getting our fuel from the states?”
He said he knows that the fuel supply is processed in Singapore before it is shipped to the Pacific so “I don’t understand how come the price is so high. There must be a monopoly.”
Mendiola, who owns two vehicles, said he doesn’t go out a lot because he is already a retiree. “But still, if you are going to look at the price of gas, it sometimes drops only 10 cents but it goes up 15 cents.”
Another retiree, Stanley Villagomez, said the gas price increase affects not only motorists.
He said maintaining one’s house and yard is also affected because “you’re going to need fuel for your brush cutter, blower or pressurized washer.”
If not for his pension, he said “the impact [of the fuel price hikes] on my budget would have been worse.”
According to Reuters, oil prices rose on Wednesday, “extending gains even after OPEC+ producers stuck to an agreed output target rise for February and U.S. fuel inventories surged due to sliding demand as Covid-19 cases spiked.”
In another news report, gas price watcher Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy said gas, diesel and home heating fuel will cost more “as demand is outstripping supply.”
