This paper estimates the welfare impact of the 2026 oil price shock on Philippine households and examines the fiscal cost of targeted cash assistance under alternative coverage strategies. Using the 2023 Family Income and Expenditure Survey linked to the ADB 2023 Philippines Input-Output Table, the analysis finds that the welfare burden is regressive through the indirect channel — poor and low-income households bear a disproportionately higher burden through food and public transport prices relative to their income. The low-income class, households earning between one and two times the provincial poverty line, bears one of the two highest proportional burdens of any income class alongside the lower middle-income class and is the sole source of all newly poor households under every scenario examined. Extending cash assistance to cover both the poor and the low-income class reaches 48.6 percent of all Philippine households at less than 30 percent of the cost of a universal program. A poverty protection efficiency analysis shows that this strategy protects 3,174 newly poor households per billion pesos spent, while a universal program registers less than one-third this efficiency at more than three times the cost. The paper concludes that a relief measure limited to the officially poor provides no protection to the households the shock itself pushes into poverty, and that extending coverage to the low-income class is both more effective and more fiscally efficient.