Price of butane up; gasoline may be next

With war in Iraq perhaps only days away, and Venezuela still reeling from months of political turmoil, it is a worldwide fact of life that petroleum prices are going through the roof. Today, Belize felt the hard pinch of that reality once again as the control price of butane gas took another leap. Here are the new rates for hundred pound cylinders: customers in Belize City will pay seventy-six dollars; Belmopan seventy-eight dollars; San Ignacio seventy-nine dollars. Benque Viejo del Carmen will pay the most at eighty dollars a tank. In Orange Walk and Corozal, butane will sell for seventy-five dollars, while Dangriga and Punta Gorda round off the list with seventy-two and seventy-three dollars respectively. This is the third price hike since September in the butane industry. Using Belize City as a bench mark, in September the price stood at sixty-two dollars, rose to sixty-eight in October, increased again in January to seventy dollars, before reaching today’s new rate of seventy-six dollars. The latest price hikes average eight percent. Most of Belize’s butane is imported from Mexico, with a lesser amount originating in Guatemala.

And prices at the gas stations aren’t looking much better. According to officials at Esso Standard Oil, Belize’s sole importer of gasoline, diesel and kerosene, the next fuel shipment is expected to arrive in the country on March eighteenth. We have been made to understand that the acquisition price for that shipment will not be determined until its arrival in port, but it is almost certain that the price will go up. Tonight, a government spokesman tells News 5 that Belmopan had planned to continue to absorb the cost of rising acquisition prices until the end of the financial year, on March thirty-first. But given the extenuating circumstances, it appears that government will have to reassess its position and review its revenue situation to determine if it will be able to afford what is likely to be a major blow in next week’s tanker. The pump price in Belize City for premium gasoline today stood at six dollars and ninety-five cents a gallon.