MOBIL Oil Marianas and Shell Marianas reduced their gasoline prices by 20 cents on Friday and Saturday respectively.
The Mobil Oil station in Chalan Kiya displays its new prices on Friday.
It is the seventh gasoline price rollback since July.
This time, the regular gas price went down to $5.41 a gallon from $5.61 a gallon and the premium gas price is down to $5.86 a gallon from $6.06 a gallon. But the diesel price is still $6.68 a gallon.
Calvo Enterprises on Rota had not yet implemented Friday’s roll back. As of Sunday, the regular gas price on Rota was $7.06 a gallon while diesel cost $10.32 a gallon.
Lot Bunao, a restaurant manager on Tinian, said it’s good news when fuel prices go down, but she hopes the prices of basic commodities, especially food, will follow.
The restaurant she operates, she said, has three vehicles — one for delivery, one for errands and one for proper trash disposal.
For these three vehicles, they spend about a total of $80 on gasoline a day. And even when gas prices go down by 20 cents per gallon, they don’t immediately feel the benefit because the cost of running the business remains high, Bunao added.
She said the price of one case of chicken thighs on Tinian, for example, is now $80, while a whole chicken now costs $18.
Bunao said what local residents and businesses on Tinian are hoping to see is a rollback in the price of food and other basic commodities.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that oil prices had “extended their slide…led lower by worries that the global economy would slow further with renewed restrictions to curb Covid-19 in China.”
“The weakness coming out of China has played a significant role” in lowering prices, Harry Altham, energy analyst for EMEA & Asia at StoneX Group in London, told Reuters. “There are fears of demand destruction across the West as interest rates rise and inflation concerns grip Western economies.”
