Petrol Malaysia

The first article Today I was referred an article at Sinar Harian, " Perang Harga Minyak Bermula! ". Translated into English, it means, "The Oil Price Wars Begin!" And in that article there is a tantalizing line: "...setiap stesen minyak akan berlumba-lumba menawarkan harga bahan api yang istimewa bagi menggoda pengguna untuk mengisi petrol atau diesel di stesen mereka." Translated into English, it means, "... every petrol station will race to offer special prices for petrol to seduce consumers to fill in petrol or diesel at their station." That seems to imply that different petrol stations will have different petrol prices!

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak shared a moment with US President Barack Obama. He was in Southern California for a working visit. Source: The Star The Prime Minister's Speech Sometime in February this year, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak, stood before a crowd of Malaysian students in Southern California. He was there for a six day working visit, to meet 16 fund managers from 11 US firms in San Francisco. The Prime Minister was quoted in New Straits Times as saying: If you look at the oil price today and what it was one year ago, it means we would lose RM40 billion. Can you imagine, without GST, what kind of adverse impact it would have on not only the economy, but also the people’s welfare? It was his way of addressing the recalibration of the Malaysian 2016 Budget, in response to a projected revenue loss due to the dropping price of oil per barrel. It is not clear whether it also took into consideration the drop of the Ringgit. W...

The price of RON95 is now RM1.95 and RON97 is now RM2.25. This price is cheaper than prices in October 2014, when the present pricing mechanism was imposed. The nice table you see above is from the Facebook page of Sinchew Daily newspaper. (Thanks, guys! I couldn't have done it better myself....) It's a frequent complaint of Malaysians whenever the price of petrol goes up. "What! Oil now up to $xxxx (insert figure here) per barrel! Soon our petrol will go up again. Soon everything will go up again...." And it is an accepted fact of life -- petrol prices will go up every so often, causing everything to go up. Coffee, food, clothes, services, etc. Everything goes up with the petrol. However, due to the current petrol war between Saudi and USA, excess oil production has driven oil prices down. Some articles say that it's to drive the USA out of the oil business. Reason? Saudi has lower breakeven point for each barrel produced (after the initial cost of d...

Dear Reader It's been more than 5 years since Mr. Paul Tan wrote his article " How Fuel Prices Are Calculated in Malaysia ". Other blogs have also covered this issue. To recap, the oil automatic pricing mechanism (applied in Malaysia since 1983 ) was based on the following: Cost of Product - Based on Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) Alpha petrol - 5 sen / liter diesel - 4 sen / liter Operational Cost Peninsular Malaysia - 9.54 sen / liter Sabah - 8.98 sen / liter Sarawak - 8.13 sen / liter Oil Company Margin petrol - 5 sen / liter diesel - 2.25 sen / liter Petrol Dealer Margin petrol - 12.19 sen / liter diesel - 7 sen / liter Sales Tax / Fuel Subsidy petrol - 58.62 sen / liter diesel - 19.64 sen / liter subsidy if price higher than retail price tax if price lower than retail price As we can see, the subsidies are quite substantial compared with the alpha, the margins and the operational costs. PerakToday noted that MOPS is based...

The much touted upheaval in the fuel price will not come to pass. The Government has announced that the controversial plan to implement tiered fuel pricing via MyKad identification, will be shelved. (Source: The Sun, 24th Feb 2010. No go for tiered pricing .) Fuel subsidies will continue for the meantime. The plan was called off due to the logistics horror that would ensue from having 15 million people queue up at the National Registration Department, simply to enable their identification cards as a means of identifying whether they qualify for subsidised fuel. The system, which would have been known as ePetrol, was detailed in a report by the Star dated 26th May 2008. (Ref: The Star, 26th May 2008. How ePetrol system works .) (Update) The Malaysian Insider reported that the Government pulled the plug on the plan after complaints from consumers and petrol dealers, who worried about long queues at petrol stations. Despite that, an unnamed industry insider was quoted saying, ".....

Dear Reader, Crude Oil A very good weekend to you. Before we commence our discussion, we first touch upon the price of crude oil. Today, the price of crude oil is, according to various sources: USD78 per barrel on 15th January 2010 (Ref: Wall Street Journal, 15th Jan. 2010. Update: Oil futures: Crude drops to $78/Bbl on Weak Econ Data .) USD78 per barrel on 14th January 2010 (Ref: CNN, 14 Jan. 2010. Oil slides as weather warms, stocks slide .) USD78 per barrel for February futures at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and USD77.11 per barrel for March delivery at London (Ref: Reuters, 15th January 2010. NYMEX - Crude down 5th day as cold eases, dollar up .) According to the Wall Street Journal ( ibid. ), the latest US economic data shows demand for energy is slowing down, perhaps an indication the American economy recovery is slowing down. Energy stockpiles are rising despite projections that colder weather would bump up fuel consumption to generate heat. Experts have ide...

If you ever look at the warning plaque which is mounted on the wall, next to many petrol pumps, you would notice that there are warnings about: (a) mobile phones and electronic devices; (b) static electricity; (c) no smoking; (d) turning off the engine; (e) filling portable containers in the ground; and (f) not removing the nozzle if a fire starts. That last warning about a fire starting, should have been a clue as to why we need to heed these warnings. Here is a picture of an example warning plaque: There are some people who think that you should not re-enter the vehicle while filling up on petrol. Here is a video of one such incident where a woman re-entered her car while filling up (at 0:45). Observe how the pump caught fire when she touched it (at 1:03). In another incident, a Shell truck carrying petrol caught fire when one of its staff decided to illuminate a portion with his mobile phone. (Observe at 1:22) Both these videos are undated and can be found on YouTube, th...

Merdeka and Malaysia It is now September 2009. Malaysia is 52 years old -- We Malaysians have just celebrated our 52nd Indenpendence Day on 31st August 2009. Not many people will tell you, however, that Malaysia was formed on 16th September 1963. Instead, the historic "release" from our former British colonial masters is glorified, time and time again -- without mention that it is Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia) that is being celebrated. It is appropriate in this day and age of 1Malaysia to celebrate 16th September this coming year. Again, the fact that Singapore was originally a part of Malaysia when it came into being on 16th September 1963, is quite often forgotten by younger Malaysians. (Singapore was later ejected from Malaysia on 9th August 1965, and did not come crawling back as expected. The Prime Minister then, Lee Kuan Yew, did all he could to transform the economy of the nascent island nation to a self-sufficient one.) ...and Singapore The inclusion of Singapor...

10 Month High and Factors On 24/8/2009, OPEC's basket price for crude oil stood at USD$72.89. The basket price is an average of prices from various regions. (Ref: OPEC Basket Price .) The graph shows that crude oil prices dropped to a low of USD68.04 on 17/8/2009 and have been climbing steadily since then. The result is a V-shaped movement over the last two weeks -- a decline in the price of oil (from USD72.22 to USD68.04) and its subsequent surge on the 24th of August 2009. On 24th August 2009, The Malaysian Insider reported that crude oil hit a ten month high at more than USD74/= per barrel. (Ref: The Malaysian Insider, 24th August 2009. Oil rises above US$74, nears 10 month high .) The factors cited in the report were: (1) Hopefulness that the US economy would recover soon, and (2) A storm in Eastern Canada. This storm was caused by Hurricane Bill: ... Hurricane Bill brought rain and heavy winds to Nova Scotia in eastern Canada on Sunday, but the Category 1 storm caused li...

Today, in an article featured on the Business Standard , Malaysian Prime Minister YAB Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak was quoted as saying that global oil prices would rise this year, though not to the spectacular heights of 2007. (Ref: Business Standard, 13th July 2009. Global oil prices are expected to rise: Malaysia PM ) Business Standard, on its website, claims the following: Business Standard is the country's most respected business daily, being the first choice of serious business readers. It is published in colour from 12 centres in India - Mumbai (formerly Bombay), New Delhi, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Bangalore, Chennai (formerly Madras), Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Pune, Kochi and Bhubaneswar. The newspaper believes in free, fair and independent journalism and strives to inculcate these values in its editorial staff. The journalism practised by Business Standard lays equal stress on quality, credibility and accuracy. Business Standard has the country's best...