Gasul: the same tank costs ₱970 in one town and ₱1,844 in the next

If you sell gasul, you already know the two things that make it a strange product to stock. One tank ties up more capital than a whole shelf of sachets. And the price your supplier quotes you this month has almost nothing to do with the price you read about in the news.

Both of those got easier to see this month.

What actually changed on 1 September

The Department of Energy announced a rollback effective 1 September 2026:

Four pesos and forty centavos. On a tank that costs well over a thousand pesos, that is a rounding error, and it is the second downward move of the year.

What is interesting is why it fell, because the raw material got more expensive, not less:

The gas itself went up. Shipping it here got cheaper, by more than the gas went up, and the peso helped a little. Energy Secretary Sharon Garin put it plainly: the contract price was higher, offset by lower freight and a slightly stronger peso.

That is worth understanding, because freight is the part that swings hardest and fastest. A rollback built on cheap shipping is not a trend. Do not reprice your tanks on the assumption that gas is getting cheaper.

The number that should actually change what you do

The DOE puts the national range for an 11-kilo household cylinder at ₱1,031 to ₱1,536, depending on brand and location.

Now look at one region close up. These are the DOE-monitored prices for Davao Region for 1 to 7 September 2026:

And by city:

But the averages hide the real finding. Across that one region, actual monitored household prices ran from ₱970 to ₱1,844 per 11-kilo cylinder.

That is a spread of ₱874 on the same size tank, in the same region, in the same week. The dearest tank is 90% more expensive than the cheapest.

What that means at your counter

It means the average is not your price, and your neighbour's price is not your price either. A ₱4.40 rollback is noise next to a ₱874 spread. If you are within a couple of hundred pesos of the cheapest tanks in your area, you are competitive whatever the DOE announces. If you are near the top of the range, no rollback will fix that; only a different supplier will.

It means the brand and the dealer you buy from is the single biggest decision you make on this product. Not your markup. Not the month.

And it means gasul is a capital question before it is a margin question. A tank at ₱1,300 landed is more money sitting on your floor than most of your dry goods combined. Two tanks is close to three thousand pesos that is not earning until somebody's gas runs out.

The arithmetic

Say you buy an 11-kilo refill from your dealer at ₱1,180 and sell at ₱1,320.

1. Gross per tank: ₱1,320 − ₱1,180 = ₱140
2. As a margin on cost: 140 ÷ 1,180 = 11.9%
3. If you turn four tanks a month: ₱560 a month from roughly ₱2,400 tied up in stock

Compare that with the sachets. A ₱6.45 sachet sold at ₱9 earns ₱2.55, which is a 40% margin, and the same ₱2,400 of capital buys you a lot of sachets that turn far faster.

So the honest position on gasul is this: it is a low-margin, high-capital, slow-turning product that you carry because it brings people to your store and because they will buy other things while they are there. Exactly like rice. That is a perfectly good reason to sell it. It is a bad reason to let it quietly consume the capital your fast movers need.

If you also deliver, or lend out a regulator, or accept the empty tank back, price that in. Those are real costs and most stores absorb them without noticing.

Three things to do this week

1. Ring two other dealers and ask their refill price. Given a ₱874 spread in one region, the odds that your current dealer is the best available are not good. This is one phone call with a bigger payoff than any pricing tweak.

2. Count how many tanks you actually sold last month. Not how many you think. If it is one or two, the capital is better used elsewhere and you can order on demand instead of stocking.

3. Check your price against the range, not against the rollback. ₱1,031 to ₱1,536 nationally. Where do you sit? If you are above the middle, the question is your supplier, not your customers.

In TindaJuan you can set the tank as a counted item with a low-stock number of one, so it lands on your buy list the moment it sells rather than the next time you happen to look at the corner. The item page keeps your buy price and your sell price side by side, so the ₱140 is on the screen instead of in your head.

The short version

• LPG fell ₱0.40 a kilo, or ₱4.40 a tank, on 1 September 2026. The second cut this year.
• It fell because freight dropped from $120.82 to $94.41 a tonne, not because gas got cheaper. The contract price actually rose to $649.50.
• The national range is ₱1,031 to ₱1,536 per 11-kilo cylinder. In Davao Region alone, real monitored prices ran ₱970 to ₱1,844.
• A ₱874 spread makes your choice of dealer worth far more than your markup.
• Gasul is a traffic product with heavy capital tied up. Carry it deliberately, not by habit.

Sources. Department of Energy September 2026 LPG price announcement, effective 1 September 2026, reported by Daily Tribune and Newswatch Plus on 1 September 2026. Davao Region monitored prices for 1 to 7 September 2026 via SunStar Davao, 6 September 2026. Figures checked on 19 September 2026 and will move with the next monthly announcement.