The Institute for Energy Security (IES) has predicted that there will be no changes in fuel prices during the first two weeks of September 2023.
This is as a result of the second-pricing window stability of the cedi versus the U.S. dollar in August 2023 and the slowing of international movements of all petroleum products.
“The various finished petroleum products as monitored on Standard & Poor (S&P) Platt platform within the past window exhibited the following dynamics; Gasoline [petrol] traded at $989.48 per metric tonne against the previous $967.29 per metric tonne, Gasoil [diesel] also moved from $901.73 per metric tonne to $912.68, and Liquid Petroleum Gas price moved to $557.05 per metric from $547.52 per metric tonne. These changes led to price effect of 2.29%, 0.13% and 1.7% increase in all three products prices; Gasoline, Gasoil and LPG respectively,” it stated.
The Ghana cedi has depreciated against the US dollar over the past two weeks, falling from 11.39 to 11.45, a drop of 0.52%, according to research by the IES Economic Desk on the forex market.
During the second pricing window of August, there was an observed increase in prices for domestic petroleum products. Specifically, diesel prices rose by 5%, while gasoline prices experienced a 3.90% increase.
The Institute of Energy Studies (IES) conducted a basic random sampling of price data from several Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) over a period of two weeks. The results indicate that the average national rates per litre of gasoline were ¢13.02, ¢12.85 for diesel, and ¢13.14 per kilogramme for LPG.
On the other hand, a barrel of Brent Crude sold for $84.48 on August 28, 2023, with an average price per barrel of $84.16.
This is due to the fact that China, the world’s largest oil importer, is in the midst of a catastrophic property crisis, which has dampened risk appetite throughout markets and raised serious concerns about the state of the Chinese economy. It is likely to have a bigger effect on global demand, but data on how much oil China uses shows that this might not be the case, so experts say the fears are unwarranted.
