The Bahamas Petroleum Retailers Association (BPRA) is advising Bahamians to monitor the ongoing conflict in the middle east between Iran and Israel as it can affect gas prices locally.

BPRA Vice President, Vasco Bastian said, “no one can say exactly what the percentage is right now. The spotters on the global market will determine that because all of the anxiety the fact that there is war going on. The fact that, like I said earlier, the disruption in the supply chain. And so the spotters will be trying to figure out the value they can get for a barrel of oil.”

On Monday there was a price increase on gas and diesel at one of the retailers due to an inventory change over and not a result of the ongoing hostilities between Iran and Israel. “All of the major wholesalers Esso, Shell and Rubis have adequate inventory to supply the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. So there’s never even a need for Bahamians or the motoring public to be concerned about that,” Bastian said.

According to the BPRA Vice President any rise in prices would not greatly impact the $0.25 increase in profit margin granted to gas retailers by the government in 2024. He said, “we’re an industry where our margin in fixed. So we cannot adjust our margin when the price of oil goes up. Right now, thank God, we’re working with our recent margin increase that we got October last year, when the government saw fit after 13 years gave us a margin increase. So that margin increase along with our previous margin, we feel, should be able to kind of like rough it out for a couple months at least. But hopefully this war won’t last that much longer.”

During his contribution to the 2025-2026 budget debate on Monday Minister of Economic Affairs, Sen. Hon. Michael Halkitis said the country is increasing its renewable energy deployment. He said, “the more quickly we can move to integration of more renewable energy in our power generation, the better it is for us.”