Hydrocarbon Engineering:
Fuel price increases will outpace Asian governments’ ability to offset them with subsidies, according to ESAI Energy’s recently published Asia Watch. India, Malaysia, and the Philippines have already boosted subsidies for gasoline and diesel and Indonesia could soon follow, with national elections coming in 2019. But weakening local currencies are exacerbating the effects of rising oil prices for consumers in many Asian countries. At the same time, trade tensions between China and the US are eroding regional business confidence and threaten to drag on Asian economic growth next year.
