Petron, recently acquired by Philippine food and beverage giant, San Miguel Corp (SMC), announced that their board has approved a revamp of its business to include energy generation and sale.
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Government came out with another announcement that they are seeking to review and revise the Oil Deregulation Law and not to scrap it.

The Department of Energy has stated that they lack the powers to monitor and regulate the oil industry and revising the law would help them with keeping the prices of fuel and lpg in check.
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Update: Government will review the law for revision and not move to scrap it.

The government has admitted that they lack the laws to effectively regulate the oil industry and because this they are seriously considering scrapping the almost decade old RA 8479 (or more popularly known as The Oil Deregulation Law.)

Add to this the heat received from the public due to the high price of LPG in the local market (despite the low price of oil in the world market) and the Department of Energy unable to find the true cause of the LPG shortage, had helped turn this bush fire into an inferno.
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Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp, the Oil refiner and retailer, seems to be in the Philippine government’s spotlight nowadays. One issue it is facing along with the other oil companies is the high price of LPG, which had been partially deflected to the LPG retailers and distributors. They are being accused of hoarding the cooking fuel to artificially inflate the price.

Issues facing the company directly however is its delay to list their shares in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). Over ten years have already passed since Oil Refiners were required by the passage of RA 8479 (Oil Deregulation Act) to go public. Shell has admitted that they have no “final” plans as to their IPO citing that issues with the Supreme Court and their Oil Depot in Pandacan have complicated their plans.
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San Miguel Corp (SMC), president, Ramon Ang said that they are planning to sell in 2009 some of their shareholdings in their food and packaging businesses in order to fund their investments in heavy industries. They will however still maintain control of these subsidiaries by having 51% worth of shares in them.

Just recently it was announced that Japanese beer maker, Kirin, would buy some of SMC’s shares in their Brewery business. Businessweek has a great article on the relationship of Kirin and SMC with regards to the deal they are about to embark on.
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I’m starting to think that Oil Speculators (commodity futures broker) were indeed the culprits in Oil’s meteoric rise. Look at the price of gas now in a recession. In a time before the credit crunch, investors had access to credit (or known as “Other People’s Money”) to help drive the price of oil up. Now with the credit crunch, financial institutions are cautious in lending out money so there is no financial fuel to boost the price of oil.
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