Mobil Oil Marianas on Beach Road in Garapan displays its new fuel prices on Thursday.
MOBIL Oil Marianas on Thursday reduced its fuel prices by 10 cents for the third time in two months.
Mobil’s regular gas price went down to $5.46 a gallon from $5.56 a gallon while premium gas price went down to $5.91 a gallon from $6.01 a gallon. The diesel price went down to $6.08 a gallon from $6.18 a gallon.
Shell Marianas is expected to follow suit.
Tinian Fuel Services had yet to reduce its prices, but from the last rollback, it reduced its regular gas price to $7.419 a gallon from $7.51 a gallon and diesel price to $7.999 a gallon from $8.04 a gallon.
On Rota, Calvo Enterprises had not implemented Thursday’s new prices, but it rolled back its regular gas price three weeks ago to $7.04 a gallon from $7.14 a gallon and diesel price to $10.32 a gallon from $10.45 a gallon.
FAC
Commonwealth Utilities Corp. acting Executive Director Betty G. Terlaje, in an interview, said they are hoping to see a reduction in the Fuel Adjustment Charge or FAC as a result of the fuel price rollbacks.
The FAC is set monthly and is usually announced before the start of the new month.
By order of the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission, CUC is authorized to adjust the FAC depending on the price of oil. Adjustments are made when the “Mean of Platts Singapore” monthly pricing equals or exceeds a 4.5% differential of the average per gallon cost of fuel used in the calculation of the FAC.
Terlaje said if this month’s price of oil decreased by 4.5%, then CUC can lower the FAC for November. But if it’s less than 4.5%, CUC cannot change the FAC.
Oil prices
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that oil prices fell “for the third straight session after a flurry of slow economic data from Germany, the euro zone and Britain weighed on the outlook for energy demand.”
Reuters said Brent crude futures fell $1.76, or 2%, to settle at $88.07 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell $1.75, or 2.1%, to close at $83.74 a barrel.
“Euro zone business activity data took a surprise downward turn this month, suggesting the bloc may slip into recession,” Reuters added.
“There is definitely a dialogue on about the global economy being worse this week than it was last week,” Mizuho analyst Robert Yawger told Reuters.
“It does not help that a lot of the top bankers and financial experts are in Saudi Arabia today talking about how bad the economy is,” Yawger added, referring to the Future Investment Initiative event dubbed, “Davos in the Desert.”
