Major oil firms raise market share in H1

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s major oil companies have reinforced their foothold in the local petroleum market, expanding further their market share in the first semester despite Chevron’s decline.

Latest data from the Department of Energy (DOE) showed that Petron Corp., Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., and Chevron captured 43.13-percent market share of the total demand in the first half.

This was up from the 40.77-percent market share these three major oil companies got in the same period last year, and the 41.97 percent they cornered in the full year of 2022.

Petron remained the country’s market leader during the six-month period, growing its share to 23.19 percent from 20.97 percent in the first half last year.

Shell followed with a 15.55-percent share, also up from 14.61 percent in the same period in 2022.

Chevron, which is the final member of the so-called “big three,” posted a market share of 4.40 percent, lower from the 5.19 percent share it had in the first semester of last year.

The other oil industry players, meanwhile, captured 56.87 percent of the market, lower than their 59.23 percent share in the same period in 2022, and 58.03 percent as of end last year.

Leading these other oil industry players were Unioil with an 8.29 percent market share and Seaoil with 7.74 percent.

According to the DOE, total demand of petroleum products from January to June was 13,595 million liters, an increase of 3.4 percent compared to last year’s level of 13,154 million liters.

The agency said this can be translated to an average daily requirement of 75.1 million liters versus last year’s 72.7 million liters.

“The normality of the daily economic activities and lifting of state of public health emergency throughout the country due to COVID contributed to the growth in the demand of petroleum products,” the DOE said.

Gasoline oil demand rose by 10.9 percent year-on-year in the first semester, while demand of kerosene and fuel oil declined by 19.6 and 5.1 percent, respectively.

In terms of the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market, meanwhile, the DOE data showed that the total market share of other industry players, including end-users in the total LPG demand in the first half, was at 76.09 percent, while the remaining 23.91 percent was credited to Petron and Pilipinas Shell.

Petron was the market leader with a share of 23.66 percent of the total LPG demand.

Among the other LPG industry players, Liquigaz got the biggest market share with 19.14 percent share followed by South Pacific Inc. with 15.97 percent.

They were followed by Pryce Gases and Isla Gas with shares of 15.57 percent and 12.91 percent, respectively, while Phoenix LPG got 7.84 percent share, according to the DOE.

LPG demand rose by 4.9 percent year-on-year in the first semester.