Diesel jumped ₱8.82. That is ₱18.31 in three weeks.
Diesel went up ₱8.82 a liter at 6am on Tuesday 22 September 2026, kerosene ₱6.47 and gasoline ₱4.88, the third big increase in three weeks and the largest of them. Shell Pilipinas filed lower than the department on all three. A Cebu City price tracker still listed regular diesel at ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 on 21 September, unchanged in a week. Jeepney and ferry fares have not moved.
Oil firms raised pump prices again at 6am on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, the third big increase in three weeks and the largest of them. The Department of Energy put it at ₱8.82 a liter on diesel, ₱6.47 on kerosene and ₱4.88 on gasoline. Cebu City regular diesel was still listed at ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 on 21 September, the same range as a week earlier, which is either a board that has not moved or a tracker that has not refreshed.
Reported by Suroy Newsdesk. Edited by Janette Arceo. Editorial standards. Published 3 September 2026. Updated 22 September 2026.
Updated 22 September 2026. The third big increase in three weeks landed at 6am, and diesel carried it. The Department of Energy put Tuesday’s adjustment at ₱8.82 a liter on diesel, ₱6.47 on kerosene and ₱4.88 on gasoline, effective 6am on 22 September, announced by Energy Secretary Sharon Garin at a press conference on Monday 21 September for the week of 22 to 28 September and reported the same day by Rappler and Philstar. Across three weeks that is ₱18.31 on diesel, ₱16.67 on kerosene and ₱15.25 on gasoline, as Philstar totaled it on 21 September. Shell Pilipinas is the only company that had published a per product advisory when this page was checked at 7am on 22 September, and it filed under the department on all three, at ₱7.80 on diesel, ₱6.40 on kerosene and ₱4.80 on gasoline from 6am, reported by GMA News Online on 21 September. MetroFuel Tracker still listed Cebu City regular diesel at ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 on 21 September, the same range it carried on 14 September, so this page is not projecting a Cebu board price this week.
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What changed on Tuesday
The adjustment took effect at 6am on Tuesday, 22 September 2026. The Department of Energy put the movement at ₱8.82 a liter on diesel, ₱6.47 on kerosene and ₱4.88 on gasoline, announced by Energy Secretary Sharon Garin at a press conference on Monday 21 September for the week of 22 to 28 September. The department cites tight physical supply and continuing tensions in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is working to bring part of its East-West pipeline back online and to offer extra cargoes to Asian refiners, vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is still constrained, and Houthi threats to Red Sea shipping and to energy infrastructure have not eased. Rappler and Philstar both carried the department figures on 21 September 2026. Shell Pilipinas had published a per product advisory when this page was checked at 7am on 22 September and no other company had, so the table below carries the department figures and names Shell separately.
| Product | Change a liter | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Diesel | +₱8.82 | Increase |
| Kerosene | +₱6.47 | Increase |
| Gasoline | +₱4.88 | Increase |
Household LPG did not move with this week’s bulletin, which covers gasoline, diesel and kerosene. The tax on it is what is in play. The LPG Marketers Association has asked Energy Secretary Sharon Garin to suspend excise taxes on LPG and other petroleum products, and the Department of Finance has said the excise on LPG and kerosene could be suspended again if the Department of Energy certifies that Dubai crude has breached the government’s $80 a barrel trigger. That certification has now been made. The department certified a one month average Dubai price of $99.41 a barrel from 13 August to 11 September 2026, and the Development Budget Coordination Committee is finalizing a recommendation on excise relief for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The earlier suspension ended on 8 July 2026. Rappler and Philstar reported the tax question on 14 September 2026, and Rappler reported the certification on 21 September 2026, carrying it alone.
The balance between the two road fuels has flipped back. On 8 September diesel went up ₱5.18 against gasoline at ₱4.69. On 15 September gasoline went up ₱5.68 against diesel at ₱4.31. On 22 September diesel went up ₱8.82 against gasoline at ₱4.88, a gap of ₱3.94 and the widest of the three. Across the three weeks together diesel is up ₱18.31 and gasoline ₱15.25, so it is a diesel story again, and it lands hardest on the people who move goods.
What the boards in Cebu actually read
A national adjustment is announced as a change per liter, never as a price. The price itself depends on the city, the brand, the station and how far the fuel traveled to get there, which is why a Manila bulletin does not tell a Cebu driver what they will pay.
Suroy.ph checked the board at the Petron station on N. Escario Street in Cebu City on the evening of Wednesday, 2 September 2026, the day after the 1 September rollback took effect. The photograph above is that board. It is now twenty days and three adjustments old, worth about ₱18.31 a liter on diesel, and it records a price nobody in the city will pay today. The four products on it, Turbo Diesel, Xtra Advance and XCS alongside regular diesel, are Petron lines, which is how the station is identified here.
| Product | Board price, Escario, 2 September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Diesel | ₱84.50 |
| Turbo Diesel | ₱87.50 |
| Xtra Advance | ₱74.60 |
| XCS | ₱75.60 |
Across the wider city the spread is broad. MetroFuel Tracker, which compiles DOE bulletins and reports from drivers at the pump, listed Cebu City regular diesel between ₱93.28 and ₱97.10, premium diesel between ₱96.40 and ₱99.30, unleaded 91 between ₱83.29 and ₱86.60 and premium 95 between ₱84.29 and ₱92.20 on 21 September 2026, across 187 stations and one day before the increase. The cheapest regular diesel on it that day was ₱93.28, at a Jetti station. Those are the same five ranges the tracker carried on 14 September, to the centavo, after a week in which diesel went up ₱4.31. Either the Cebu boards did not move on 15 September or the tracker did not refresh them, and Suroy.ph cannot tell which from the tracker alone. Last week this page added the ₱4.31 to the range and pointed at roughly ₱97.50 to ₱101.50. That did not show up. So the arithmetic is set out here and not carried as a price: adding the ₱8.82 announced for 22 September to the listed range would point at roughly ₱102 to ₱106. Treat all of it as indicative rather than official, because the DOE publishes its Visayas monitoring only in weekly reports covering Cebu, Mandaue and eleven other centers.
Either way the spread is worth a short detour. About ₱3.82 a liter separated the cheapest and dearest regular diesel in the city on 21 September, which is around ₱153 on a 40 liter fill.
The number that matters more than ₱8.82
One week’s movement is the smallest useful unit for reading a fuel market. The year is the bigger one, and in Cebu the year has been violent.
| Cebu diesel | Price a liter |
|---|---|
| Opening 2026 | ₱51.90 to ₱59.88 |
| Late March, at the peak | ₱135 to ₱153 |
| 21 September 2026 | ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 |
That is the year in three lines. Diesel roughly tripled between the escalation of 28 February and the end of March, gave most of it back through a ₱23 rollback on 14 April and the months since, and on the 21 September listing sat roughly ₱40 above where January started, before Tuesday’s ₱8.82 goes on top. One week is a small move inside a very large one.
One national figure is worth flagging, because it circulates widely and does not square with the pumps. The Department of Energy’s running total of weekly adjustments reached a net increase of ₱59.06 a liter on diesel as of 31 August 2026. PhilNews put the year to date net at ₱59.32 on gasoline, ₱60.46 on diesel and ₱53.45 on kerosene on 14 September 2026, carrying those figures alone. The diesel number lines up with the ₱59.06 base only once the ₱3.83 rollback of 1 September and the ₱5.18 increase of 8 September are applied, which places it before 15 September rather than after it. No agency has published an updated running total since. Carrying the ₱4.31 of 15 September and the ₱8.82 of 22 September forward from it would take diesel near ₱73.59, and that figure is arithmetic that no agency has published. Philstar’s ₱18.31 on diesel is a three week total for 8, 15 and 22 September and not a year to date figure, and it is used that way here. Taken at face value any of them would put diesel well above what any board in Cebu or Metro Manila is currently showing. The running total and the retail price have drifted apart somewhere, Suroy.ph could not reconcile the two, and the Cebu prices above are the ones a driver actually pays.
Central Visayas has had fuel subsidies running since April: ₱1,500 to ₱5,000 per public utility vehicle driver, and ₱5,000 each for more than 15,000 tricycle drivers from 8 April.
Why it moved, and why it may not hold
The rollback of 1 September traced to the Strait of Hormuz. Progress in negotiations to reopen the strait eased the crude benchmarks that Philippine pump prices follow on a roughly one week lag.
That progress did not last the weekend. Iran and the United States exchanged fire again on 31 August 2026, the day before the rollback took effect. Philippine pump prices track the previous week’s average, so the 1 September cut reflected a market that had already turned by the time drivers saw it on the board. The ₱5.18 of 8 September was that turn reaching the pump, and the ₱4.31 of 15 September and the ₱8.82 of 22 September are the two weeks after it, with the supply risk widened rather than resolved. Three consecutive weeks of increases have now taken back the ₱3.83 rollback nearly five times over on diesel.
What did not come down
Pump prices adjust weekly. Almost nothing else in Philippine transport does, which is why an increase reaches the passenger long before any relief does. Manibela ran a two day nationwide transport strike on 14 and 15 September 2026 over that gap, with chairman Mar Valbuena asking for a review or suspension of petroleum taxes, a stronger and more accessible fuel subsidy and a review of oil industry policy, as Philstar reported on 14 September 2026. The government has kept its fuel subsidy for qualified public utility vehicle drivers, with the discount raised to ₱12 a liter from 15 August and running through September, and the LTFRB has issued guidelines for monthly cash assistance to jeepney operators starting this week. Jeepney fares themselves have not moved. PISTON’s petition for a ₱10 provisional increase, filed in April 2026, and Manibela’s request for ₱2, made in July, were both still with the LTFRB when this page was checked.
On the water, the mechanism is explicit. MARINA Advisory No. 2026-15, issued 30 March 2026, raised the ceiling on domestic shipping rate adjustments to 30 percent of the Required Rate Adjustment, citing fuel costs then running about 152 percent above the 28 February level. The same advisory committed operators to “mandatory downward adjustments in rates should global fuel prices decrease”.
Part of that has happened. 2GO cut its fuel surcharge from 20 percent to a maximum of 10 percent of base rate effective 6 July 2026, under MARINA Advisory No. 2026-35. In the Visayas, Lite Ferries, Roble Shipping and Aznar Shipping had each applied 10 percent rather than the full allowance when the surcharges went on in early April.
Part of it has not. Cebu Provincial Board member Andrei Duterte authored a resolution, approved by the full board, urging MARINA 7 to review the fuel surcharges still riding on the Cebu to Camotes route, on the argument that operators are now spending materially less to run the same boats. The San Francisco municipal council filed a similar request on 12 May 2026. Camotes has no alternative: the ferry is the only way people and goods move between the island group and the mainland.
In the air, the one fare component that does move on a fixed schedule has already priced this in. The Civil Aeronautics Board set its interim passenger and cargo fuel surcharge at Level 14 for 16 to 30 September 2026, one notch above the Level 13 that ran from 1 to 15 September, which puts ₱457 to ₱1,336 on a domestic ticket depending on distance against ₱423 to ₱1,237 before, and ₱1,509.08 to ₱11,220.71 on an international one against ₱1,396.74 to ₱10,385.42. The board cited jet fuel up 9 percent to $171.01 a barrel in the week ending 4 September 2026, converted at ₱62.25 to the dollar. The Inquirer reported it on 11 September 2026 and Panay News on 14 September 2026. That surcharge resets every fifteen days, so the band covering 1 to 15 October will be the first to price in this week’s increase. On land, jeepney and bus fares are set by the LTFRB and do not move with the weekly bulletin either. For what those currently cost in Cebu, see the Cebu City jeepney guide and the north and south bus terminal guide. For crossings north, the Hagnaya, Santa Fe, Maya and Malapascua ferry guide carries the current fares, and the Cebu trip budget calculator works out what a week costs at today’s numbers rather than last year’s.
What to expect next Tuesday
Philippine oil firms adjust at 6am every Tuesday, and the signal reaches the press the Friday or Monday before. The next adjustment lands on Tuesday, 29 September 2026.
No estimate for 29 September had been published when this page was checked on the morning of 22 September. The signal is normally built on four days of Mean of Platts Singapore movement and the exchange rate, and it is a direction rather than a price until the companies file their advisories.
The Department of Energy called the 8 September increase in advance. Rino Abad, who directs the DOE’s Oil Industry Management Bureau, said on dzBB on Friday 4 September that the increase would land very close to the ₱4 to ₱5 range and that it would be better to refuel over the weekend than to wait until Tuesday. He was right about the direction and a little under on the size. Diesel came in at ₱5.18.
In Cebu terms: the tracker still listed regular diesel at ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 on 21 September, unchanged from 14 September, so the arithmetic this page ran last week did not turn up in the listing. Adding the ₱8.82 to that range would point at roughly ₱102 to ₱106, which is arithmetic with a failed week behind it rather than a price. What is not in doubt is that the ₱8.82 lands on top of the ₱4.31 of 15 September and the ₱5.18 of 8 September rather than instead of them.
The cause has widened beyond the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia shut its East-West oil pipeline after an aerial attack, and the advance of Yemen’s Houthis along the Red Sea put a second shipping route at risk, on top of continuing concern over Hormuz itself. Disruption to tanker traffic through either passage moves crude and refined product prices quickly, and Philippine pump prices follow on a roughly one week lag. Rappler reported the sequence on 14 September 2026 and reported on 21 September 2026 that Saudi Arabia has since been working to restore part of the pipeline and to offer extra cargoes to Asian refiners, without the physical market loosening. The Department of Energy has kept citing tensions in the Middle East as the main factor, which Philstar reported on 21 September 2026.
This page is updated after each Tuesday adjustment. The Cebu ranges quoted here were checked on 21 September 2026 and the adjustment itself on the morning of 22 September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How much did fuel prices go up on 22 September 2026?
Diesel rose ₱8.82 a liter, kerosene ₱6.47 and gasoline ₱4.88, effective 6am on Tuesday, 22 September, according to the Department of Energy. The week before, on 15 September, gasoline rose ₱5.68, diesel ₱4.31 and kerosene ₱4.62. Shell Pilipinas filed lower than the department on all three this week, at ₱7.80 on diesel, ₱6.40 on kerosene and ₱4.80 on gasoline.
How much is diesel in Cebu right now?
A Cebu City price tracker covering 187 stations listed regular diesel at ₱93.28 to ₱97.10 on 21 September 2026, the day before the increase, with premium diesel ₱96.40 to ₱99.30. It listed the same ranges on 14 September, so either the boards did not move over that week or the listing did not refresh, and Suroy.ph could not tell which. Adding the ₱8.82 announced for 22 September to the listed range would point at roughly ₱102 to ₱106, which is arithmetic rather than an observed board price. The Petron board on N. Escario Street read ₱84.50 on 2 September 2026, which is three adjustments ago.
Are fuel prices in Cebu higher than in Manila?
Usually, yes, and the reason is freight. Fuel reaching Cebu carries the cost of moving it there, so provincial boards typically sit above Metro Manila for the same product and the same week. The DOE publishes Visayas monitoring separately from the National Capital Region for that reason.
Will ferry and jeepney fares go up now?
Not automatically, and not quickly. Pump prices adjust weekly, while fares and fuel surcharges are set by the LTFRB and MARINA and move only when those agencies act. Air fuel surcharges have already moved, to Level 14 for 16 to 30 September, and no band for 1 to 15 October had been published when this page was checked. Jeepney fares have not moved, and petitions for an increase were still pending when this page was checked. MARINA has stepped its shipping surcharge ceiling down twice in 2026, and 2GO cut its own surcharge to a maximum 10 percent in July, but surcharges on some Cebu routes remain under review.
When is the next fuel price adjustment?
Tuesday, 29 September 2026, at 6am. The estimate normally reaches the press on the Friday or Monday before. The last adjustment, on 22 September, put diesel up ₱8.82 a liter, kerosene ₱6.47 and gasoline ₱4.88.
Sources
- Department of Energy, oil price adjustments effective 8, 15 and 22 September 2026, announced by Energy Secretary Sharon Garin on 21 September 2026, and year to date net adjustments as of 31 August 2026, reported by Rappler and Philstar, 21 September 2026, Rappler, Philstar, Top Gear Philippines and PhilNews, 14 September 2026, and GMA News Online, 31 August 2026.
- Shell Pilipinas price advisory effective 6am, 22 September 2026, reported by GMA News Online, 21 September 2026.
- Department of Energy certification of a one month average Dubai crude price of $99.41 a barrel, 13 August to 11 September 2026, reported by Rappler, 21 September 2026.
- MARINA Advisory No. 2026-15, issued 30 March 2026, and MARINA Advisory No. 2026-35, as applied by 2GO Travel effective 6 July 2026. Civil Aeronautics Board interim passenger and cargo fuel surcharge at Level 14 for 16 to 30 September 2026, reported by the Inquirer, 11 September 2026, and Panay News, 14 September 2026. Manibela transport strike of 14 and 15 September 2026 and pending LTFRB fare petitions, reported by Philstar, 14 September 2026, BusinessWorld, 20 April 2026, and Philstar, 22 July 2026.
- Cebu Provincial Board resolution on Cebu to Camotes fuel surcharges, authored by board member Andrei Duterte; San Francisco municipal council request, 12 May 2026, reported by SunStar Cebu.
- Cebu Daily News, Cebu fuel price guide 2026, for January to April 2026 price ranges and Central Visayas subsidy figures.
- MetroFuel Tracker, Cebu City pump price ranges across 187 stations, 21 September 2026, unchanged from its 14 September listing.
- Price board at the Petron station, N. Escario Street, Cebu City, confirmed on the ground and photographed by Suroy.ph, 2 September 2026.
All figures checked 22 September 2026. Corrections to editor@suroy.ph.
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