- Nisreen Hatoum
- BBC Gulf Affairs Correspondent
The UAE government was in favor of petroleum products in the country, but in August 2015 it decided to liberalize oil prices and link them to international market prices.
How can a large oil country like the UAE suffer its citizens and residents from high fuel prices, especially gasoline?
It is a question that surprises many people who follow the increase in international oil prices and their effects on their daily lives and their choices that have changed in life due to these increases. cent since the beginning of this year.
ButTHE Why have prices gone up? fuel In the United Arab Emirates?
The UAE government supported oil products in the country, but in August 2015 it decided to liberalize oil prices and link them to international market prices. The reason, according to the UAE government, is to help rationalize consumption and encourage the use of public transport, as well as stimulate the use of alternative fuels.
Therefore, the increase in international oil prices leads to an increase in its prices locally, due to its link with international prices.However, fuel prices in the UAE have seen multiple and record increases since January , equal to about 80%. Most of these increases occurred after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to an unprecedented rise in oil and gas prices around the world.
As a result, the UAE government’s Ministry of Energy resorts to adjusting fuel prices in the last week of each month and local oil companies such as “ADNOC”, “ENOC” and “Emarat” apply new prices starting from the first of each month.
Fuel prices in the UAE, for the month of November 2022, recorded the first increase after 3 months of decline.
Fuel prices in the UAE are the highest in the Gulf
In the past, the price of a liter of bottled drinking water in the UAE was much higher than the price of a liter of fuel, and Emirati citizens and residents have always been proud of it. Today, however, all of that has passed, as the UAE has become the most expensive of its Gulf neighbors in terms of fuel prices.
According to Globalpetrolprices, the price of a liter of 95 octane gasoline in early September was $ 0.898, two and a half times more than the price in Kuwait, which was $ 0.340.
A chart for global gasoline prices showed that Kuwait is the cheapest in the Gulf for gasoline prices with a rating of 95 octane, followed by Bahrain, then Qatar, then Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman and finally from the United Arab Emirates.
However, the UAE, in line with international oil prices, cut gasoline prices for the month of September by 16 percent, or about sixty Emirati fils per liter, which is the second reduction this year after that. in August.
But despite the two consecutive declines, fuel prices are still high in the UAE compared to other Gulf countries, but are considered lower than fuel prices in the UK and the United States of America.
Taxi drivers raise prices and some give up their cars
As a result of rising fuel prices, taxi and bus prices in the UAE, particularly in Dubai and Sharjah, have increased.
Many Emirates have expressed their dissatisfaction with rising fuel prices, as they consider cheap fuel their right as Emirati. This rumbling manifested itself in several tweets in which Emirati citizens expressed their dissatisfaction with the high fuel prices in their country, which is one of the largest oil exporters in the world.
But in reality it is residents who are paying the price for this increase who do not receive material subsidies from the UAE government because they are not citizens, and therefore the cost of living for them has become much more expensive, such as the increase in the price of the UAE. fuel is reflected in an increase in the prices of goods, groceries and other services due to the cost of transport which increases with rising fuel prices.
Rafi Abdul Latif – UAE resident forced to sell his car due to high fuel prices
Rafi Abdel Latif, a 52-year-old Syrian, has lived in the United Arab Emirates for more than 25 years and works in the field of media services.
In an interview with BBC News Arabic, he said he had to sell his fast 8-cylinder car because he could no longer afford the gasoline bills.
Ravi has indicated that he refuses to buy a less luxurious car than the one he owned because car prices have gotten high, he doesn’t want to spend a large amount of money on a car that doesn’t satisfy his passion for cars and doesn’t satisfy its ambitions.
In this context Ravi claims to have resorted to two options, either renting a car for transportation, which he doesn’t like and rarely adopts because it is expensive in terms of insurance imposed by car rental companies, or borrowing a car. from one of his friends, although many of them have had to sell their cars due to their lack of ability to bear the weight of gasoline.
Speaking to BBC News Arabic, Ravi explains that he used to fill his car’s fuel tank with 130 dirhams, but that became impossible when filling the fuel tank costs around 280 dirhams.
