The fuel that powers a jeepney in Manila, cooks rice in Catanduanes, or lights a lamp in San Andres begins its life in a place faraway.
It starts as crude oil drilled in the sun-baked deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Understanding that journey — from wellhead to gas station — explains why a disruption in the Middle East hits Filipino families so quickly and so hard.
How Much Fuel Does the Philippines Actually Use?
The Philippines consumed about 184.5 million barrels of petroleum products in 2024 combined — gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, fuel oil, and liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG — translating to a daily demand of roughly 505,000 barrels per day, according to the online news site Rappler.
Diesel is by far the largest single product, with annual diesel demand of about 73.7 million barrels in 2024, required by trucks, buses, jeepneys, fishing boats, and large power generators. The aviation sector alone consumes roughly 15 million barrels of jet fuel per year, while the maritime sector uses considerable amounts of bunker fuel — a thick, tar-like product — to move cargo around the islands, according to the website Astute Analytica.
For households, LPG is dominant, with about 13.7 million barrels consumed for cooking in 2022, reports the online website Statista.
It comes in the blue-capped cylinders found in homes, restaurants and carinderias.
Where Is It Drilled?
Saudi Arabia is the Philippines’ top source of crude oil, accounting for 51.4 percent of the 45.37 million barrels of crude imported in 2024. The United Arab Emirates follows at 30.9 percent, Iraq at 13.4 percent, and Qatar at 1.1 percent, according to Rigzone. These countries sit atop some of the world’s most productive oil fields — Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar, the UAE’s Zakum, Iraq’s Rumaila — where crude is extracted, stabilized, and piped to coastal loading terminals on the Persian Gulf.
How Does It Get Here?
From the oil fields, crude moves by pipeline to massive export facilities along the Persian Gulf. Saudi Aramco loads ships at Ras Tanura and Ju’aymah — two of the world’s busiest oil terminals. The UAE uses Jebel Dhanna and the Ruwais terminal, while Iraq ships primarily from Basra on the Shatt al-Arab waterway. These terminals can fill a massive supertanker in as little as 24 hours, pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels per hour through giant loading arms into the ship’s cargo holds.
What Kind of Ships Carry It?
The workhorses of the crude oil trade are Very Large Crude Carriers, or VLCCs — ships roughly 330 meters long that can carry two million barrels of oil or more. These floating cities of steel are too large for the Suez Canal when fully loaded, so they must travel down the Persian Gulf and pass through the Strait of Hormuz and turn southeast into the Red Sea. The Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran is only 21 miles wide, but oil tankers are confined to two shipping lanes only two miles wide each — making the strait the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, with approximately 16 to 20 percent of the world’s total petroleum consumption passing through it daily, says the Philippine Information Agency. From there, tankers enter the Arabian Sea and head east toward Asia.
What is the Route to Asian Refineries?
The journey from the Persian Gulf to the Philippines spans roughly 7,000 to 8,000 nautical miles. Much of the crude bound for the Philippines does not come directly here. The Philippines mostly buys refined petroleum products — diesel, gasoline, jet fuel — from South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. This means a barrel of Saudi crude may first go to a refinery in South Korea’s Ulsan or Yeosu, Singapore’s Jurong Island, or India’s Gujarat coast, where it is processed into finished fuels before being loaded again onto so-called “product tankers” bound for the Philippines.
What about the Onward Journey to the Philippines?
Product tankers — smaller than VLCCs but still big vessels — carry refined fuels across the South China Sea and the Celebes Sea. More than 95 percent of crude oil imports come from the Persian Gulf, supplied primarily by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, according to The Interpreter. The Philippine archipelago’s geography, with its 7,600 islands scattered across 1,800 kilometers from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi, means there is no single arrival point.
Where Is It Offloaded in the Philippines?
Crude oil for direct refining arrives mainly at Limay, Bataan, on the western shore of Manila Bay. Petron’s own piers at the Bataan Refinery include berthing facilities capable of accommodating Very Large Crude Carriers — the same supertankers that left the Arabian Peninsula weeks earlier. The Bataan Refinery is the largest in the Philippines, capable of processing 180,000 barrels per day, and has been in operation since 1961. It is now the country’s only active crude oil refinery, after Shell permanently closed its Tabangao facility in Batangas in 2020. Refined product imports, meanwhile, arrive at import terminals throughout the archipelago — in Batangas, Manila’s South Harbor, Subic Bay, Cebu’s Mandaue City, Davao, and General Santos.
How Is It Distributed Around the Archipelago?
Once refined or received, petroleum products begin their final journey to Filipino consumers. From Bataan, Petron moves its products mainly by sea to nearly 30 terminals across the archipelago, including the Powerzone Petroleum Products’ terminal here in Barangay Palnab del Sur, Virac. From those storage depots, bulk products are hauled by tank trucks to service stations and power plants nationwide. Catanduanes Island has about 25 service stations. For electric power, the island also has 22 diesel generating sets with an average fuel consumption of more than 5,000 liters per genset per day. Other oil companies — Shell, Seaoil, Phoenix, Cleanfuel — operate their own import terminals and distribution networks around the country. LPG moves through a separate chain, from terminals to bottling plants, then to dealers.
Conclusion: A Fragile Chain
That entire journey — from Saudi wellhead to a fuel pump in Catanduanes — takes three to five weeks under normal conditions. The Philippines’ oil consumption of nearly 474,000 barrels per day severely outpaces its domestic production of just over 14,300 barrels per day, reports the online news site The National. Every link in the chain — the drilling platform, the Strait of Hormuz, the supertanker, the refinery in Bataan, the product tanker, the depot, the tank truck — must work without interruption for the fuel to arrive on time and at an affordable price. When one link breaks, as Filipinos are learning today, the pain reaches every kitchen and every road.
Bryce McIntyre, PhD, resides in San Andres. He holds a doctoral degree from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA. Claude AI was employed in research for this article.