FIRING LINE: Now that the calm is gone

FIRING LINE: Now that the calm is gone

By Robert B. Roque Jr. | July 9, 2026

Just as we saw petroleum prices easing the last few weeks, buoyed by a calming situation in the Strait of Hormuz, comes another rude awakening: Washington and Tehran’s cease-fire has collapsed, and the region is once again primed for confrontation.

Apparently, the prospect of some relief for import-dependent nations like the Philippines is too short-lived. Again, we are threatened with a tightening of oil supply, and, almost instantly, energy authorities signaled as early as Sunday that a diesel hike of up to ₱4 per liter may take effect today (July 14).

The only relief to be seen, if it were to materialize, is gasoline limping to a modest rollback.

If strikes resume near Hormuz, the consequences are already telling: Filipino households would absorb the shock yet again. We have been here before – scourging domestic businesses early this year.

But since we have already seen this scenario play out, let us hope our government has learned how to deal with this a whole lot better. I mean, Filipino consumers cannot keep absorbing geopolitical shockwaves as if no resolution were possible.

To be fair, the Marcos administration did not sit idly by the last time Middle East tensions boiled over. Direct fuel subsidies reached hundreds of thousands of PUV drivers, service contracting kept fares from spiraling, and Executive Order 114 suspended excise taxes on LPG and kerosene once Dubai crude breached $80 a barrel.

The Department of Energy (DOE) had cracked down on hoarding, while agencies experimented with four-day workweeks and accelerated over 1,400 megawatts of renewable capacity. These were not perfect fixes, but they proved the state can act with dispatch when it must.

The question now is whether that playbook gets dusted off before the pain peaks, or after. Analysts have long urged the government to go further: temporarily suspending excise and VAT on petroleum under the TRAIN Law for genuine double-digit relief, and widening the subsidy net beyond transport workers to cushion poor and middle-class households against the secondary inflation that always follows a fuel shock.

The government must not wait for another crisis to relearn last year’s lessons. Reinstate the mechanisms that worked, study the broader ones proposed, and move now — before the pump, once again, does the talking for Malacañang.

Credit, too, can be given to Petron Corporation, which absorbed a severe financial hit to guarantee the Philippines’ national fuel security during the height of the Middle East crisis in the early part of the year.

When Hormuz first closed, trapping four million barrels of Petron’s pre-ordered Middle Eastern crude, the company didn’t fold — it pivoted, securing 2.48 million barrels of Russian crude with government support, stretching the nation’s fuel cushion past 50 days even as its own net income cratered 56 percent.

That is not a discount retailer absorbing losses; that is a domestic refiner acting as a national safety net. As tensions flare anew, Petron’s resilience deserves recognition as a genuine energy security infrastructure — just as the government should do well to protect and reinforce efforts before the next blockade triggers another supply shock.

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