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| Thais Use More Petrol in August | |||||||||||
| UPDATE : 15 September 2008 | |||||||||||
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Global oil prices continued their decline, dropping below 100 dollars per barrel, its lowest level in six months. Meanwhile, the domestic consumption of petrol shot up in August. The Energy Business Department reported domestic petrol consumption for August, for both benzene and diesel, increased since July's figures. Diesel consumption rose by 7.3 percent to 43.14 million liters per day, up from 40.19 million liters per day in July. This is the first month-on-month increase for diesel consumption in four months. Benzene consumption went up 0.2 percent to 18.05 million liters per day, up from 18.01 million liters per day in July. This is benzene consumption's first month-on-month increase in three months. The increasing demand resulted in crude imports for August increasing by 12.4 percent to 852,000 barrels per day, up from 759,000 barrels in July. The total value of oil imports rose to its highest level for this year at 1.16 trillion baht, up eight percent from July. The total value of oil imports for the first eight months of this year amounted to 7.59 trillion baht, up from the 7.1 trillion baht figure for last year. The higher demand for oil can be attributed to the government's six-month economic stimulus measure to cut excise tax for petrol sales on July 25, resulting in a drop by almost five baht per liter for petrol. Moreover, the month of August saw further declines in domestic petrol prices by almost ten baht per liter, due to falls in global prices. This led to higher personal vehicle usage by Thais. The Energy Business Department gave a comparison that in July, with diesel prices at 42.4 baht per liter, diesel consumption went down 11.4 percent. However, diesel prices went down to 34.37 baht per liter in August due to the excise tax cut and lower global oil prices, causing people to consume more petrol. Oil analyst Manoon Siriwan commented that this phenomenon of higher oil consumption as prices come down shows that Thais still do not have energy-saving ingrained in their behavior. He added that the government's policy to cut the excise tax for petrol was also wrong as global oil prices were already on the decline when the policy came out. However, he believes the policy will be kept as it is until the end of January next year, as politics remain unstable. Meanwhile, crude prices for October delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped to 99.68 dollars per barrel as it was reported that hurricane Ike caused minimal damage to offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. |
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