Roaring Forties

Jun 7 - What! Another change in the blog layout?! Anyone who has been following my blogs would know that I changed the layout four times within the last two months. Am I fickled? Or am I plain feeble minded?

Darn shit! I am neither! %$^#@&*^ I am just plain frustrated. The WordPress layout has been acting up  on me. The widgets either dissappear to the bottom or eats into the blogs itself. 

Bear with me folks. I hope this time would be the last change.

Jun 4 – The Malaysian Government announced a RM 0.78 increase or 40.6% for petrol to RM 2.70 per litre and a RM 1.00 increase or 63.3% for diesel to RM 2.58 per litre.

The announcement has caused a massive traffic jam caused by motorists who tried to fill up before the midnight deadline. I really don’t understand the mentality behind this. Imagine braving a jam and queue for 30 to 45 minutes, in order to save at maximum RM 40.00 assuming your tank was empty and could take up RM 100.00 for a full tank. The jam and queue would probably have burnt off a significant amount of the savings.

The following day, the was a public uproar all over and the opposition were having a field day bashing up the decision. The government on the other hand were trying to justify its decision and used Singapore as a model where the petrol price is RM 5.20 per litre and diesel is at RM 4.22 per litre.  This comparison naturally brought out the critics as Singapore is not an oil producing nation and would have to pay higher. Critics took the other end of the scale and quote Venezuela where petrol is priced at only RM 0.16 per litre. The question thrown is why should we be paying 16 times more than Venezuela when both countries are nett oil producers? Anwar Ibrahim reiterate in his blog that he will reduce petrol prices if he is in the government. He questions the accountability in Petronas.

First and foremost, we should examine the facts. According to the CIA World Facts Publication, Malaysia is still a nett oil producer. In fact, Malaysia is ranked 26th in the world ahead of Brunei who lies in 42nd spot. We produce 751,800 barrels compared with Brunei’s 219,300 barrels per day. However, Venezuela whose retail petrol is one of the cheapest in the world is the 10th largest producer with a capacity of 2.8 million barrels per day. Interestingly enough, Venezuela has a population of 26 million which is almost identical to ours. With an oil production which is almost four times ours’, Venezuela would be in a much better position to subsidise petrol than us.

Interestingly from the list of major oil producing countries, our government should have used Norway as an example instead of Singapore. Norway is the 8th largest producer in the world with a daily output of 2.9 million barrels, yet petrol cost about RM 4.20 per litre in Norway.

 So where do we really stand in terms of petrol retail prices in the world?

From a compilation of data done by NationMaster.Com, Malaysia lies in 127th place in retail price index for petrol. This data was done in 2004 when our Malaysian petrol cost RM 1.37 per litre. With the increase to RM 1.98 and the latest to RM 2.70 per litre, we would have moved up the ladder some 30 to 40 places but we would still be in the bottom half of the cheaper places in the world to pump petrol.

Check out the statistics here.

After all have been said, we should not be objecting to the increase in petrol prices. We should not be having demonstrations and fuelling the public anger like what the opposition is doing. All this fuss will not get us anywhere.

More importantly, we should be looking at the bigger picture. We should be asking why did the Prime Minister went ahead with the increase in petrol prices? In the current political climate where Dato Seri Abdullah Badawi’s popularity is at an all time low, such an action is almost political suicide. No politician in the right frame of mind would have done it. Couldn’t he had waited? The timing just does not make sense. 

So why did he do it? Is the situation so bad that he has no choice but to do it? Is our country going bankrupt? Or is the current government crumbling and is likely to lose power altogether, so this is a last ditch attempt to raise more war funds for the party to fight another day. Or is it for personal gains. Such thoughts are really worrisome.