The Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers Association (LPGMA) will enforce today another P1 per liter price hike on autogas, their second adjustment on the product this week.

LPGMA President Arnel Ty said the hike—an offshoot of higher LPG contract prices for September—would take place at 6 a.m.

Autogas is an LPG-based vehicle fuel primarily fed to especially converted taxis. Last Monday, the same group of independent LPG retailers added P1.20 for every liter of autogas on top of the P4 per kilo hike it implemented on cooking gas.

Ty explained that they needed to recover P2.20 in terms of their retail price for autogas, thus the second price increase. He did not say if there would be another movement on cooking gas prices this month.

Petron Corp. on Wednesday also increased their autogas price by P1.41 per liter. The fuel currently retails between P22 and P23 per liter.

Because its price is nearly half that of gasoline and results to less emission, autogas is usually referred to as “green” fuel.

Meanwhile, Department of Energy (DoE) Secretary Angelo Reyes told LPG retailers to stop making hasty announcements regarding price hikes, saying it could do more harm than good.

Reyes said such “alarmist” statements will only cause panic-buying among consumers and worse, result to a shortage of LPG in the country.

The DoE chief’s statement was a direct hit on the LPGMA, which had just implemented a P44 price increase for every regular 11-kilogram tank of cooking gas.

Ty, it was recalled, issued an advisory on the hefty price hike just two weeks into August, although the adjustment itself was to reflect the upswing in contract prices intended for September.

Ty’s announcement was premature, Reyes said. At the same time, Reyes cited reports that retailers and dealers began to hoard LPG tanks to prepare for the impending price hike.

The DoE under Reyes has long been at odds with the LPGMA.