MANILA - Oil giant Petron Corp.said it supports Malacanang's intention to create a task force that will oversee the pricing of oil products since this would help end speculations that oil firms have been overpricing their products. 

"Petron fully supports the creation of a task force by government to look into speculations on whether local pump prices are reasonable or not. Petron has always adhered to transparency and fairness in the pricing of its fuel products. We are therefore gravely concerned about statements that current gasoline prices are overpriced," Petron president Eric Recto said. 

Recto said these statements have caused undue confusion and expectations among the motoring public. 

"We reiterate our earlier statements that we remain open to any third-party audit and that as a publicly-listed company, our financial statements can be accessed and scrutinized by anyone. We have been fully cooperating with the Department of Energy and the DOE-DOJ (energy and justice departments) Task Force and have participated in a dialogue with the Secretary of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to discuss the various issues on oil pricing," he said. 

He said that when international oil prices were rising in the first half of 2008, Petron cooperated with the energy department-led audit to ascertain whether local prices were reasonable or not.

"DOE directed auditing firm SGV and the University of Asia and the Pacific to audit the books of oil firms. If we had been overpricing, it should have been immediately evident in extraordinarily high profit rates. However, the independent audit revealed that Petron's return on equity from 2005 to 2007 was much lower than the interest rates on Treasury Bills and Treasury Bonds....The study also found that local pump prices did not go up as fast as the international prices of crude and finished products during the period," he said.