This is plain hoarding and is also criminal.
Gasoline companies and dealers regularly maintain reserves of at least 90 days. This is a business truism to have enough stock to sell to customers and also a cost-saving measure to buy or import as much as you can to minimize import, transport and other costs.
In fact, it is the mantra of gasoline companies, Petron, Caltex, and Shell, and lately, even by so called independent players, in refusing to lower their prices even as world crude prices go down by claiming that their ever available retained inventory were purchased at higher cost , and must be sold out first before new prices could apply and then, only on new inventory.
It is therefore unbelievable that they will now suddenly run out of supply, timed very suspiciously with an issued Executive Order requiring a freeze on prices, and there being moreover no surge in either local or international demand.
And for the government to just sit and watch the oil companies do this blatant criminal offense of hoarding is criminal connivance at the very least. Secretary Angelo Reyes of Department of Energy ( DOE ) in fact acting as virtual co-conspirator by accurately predicting this gasoline shortage to happen, that is, the very next day.
Time and again, government officials prove that they are inutile and are in the payroll of big businesses, if not of criminal syndicates. The least that a good meaning and protective of public interest Department of Energy or even local government unit official could have done is conduct inspection of gasoline companies and dealers to check if their storage tanks are really out of gasoline. As it is right now, the Filipino public is expected to just believe their word that those storage tanks are empty dry and that one could actually throw a burning match or lighted cigarette at them and they, the oil companies and dealers, won't care a bit.
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