Illawarra motorists have around two weeks to fill up before petrol prices jump as much as 27 cents a litre in the wake of the weekend’s drone attack in Saudi Arabia.
On Saturday drones attacked the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, which will see the loss of around 5 per cent of global oil supply.
Oil analysts are estimating the price of oil could climb to $80-$90 a barrel.
The NRMA said $90 a barrel would equate to an extra 27 cents a litre at the pump.
“It is a significant incident and it will have a profound impact on global prices,” the NRMA’s Rebecca Page said.
But that profound effect won’t be felt for a few weeks.
“Global prices take around seven to 10 days to reach Sydney and as for how long the prices would take to impact the outskirts of Sydney and the Illawarra, that will be another couple of weeks probably,” Ms Page said.
However, in the short term, the Illawarra can expect to see prices come down – after having risen by almost 20 cents a litre over the last week.
“If you’re a family or business in the Illawarra, the next few days, the next week, is probably the best time to fill up because you will be following Sydney’s drop [in prices],” she said.
“It’s fair to say we’ve hit the top in the Illawarra and it should be coming down. We’re seeing prices as high as 161.9 cents – that’s really high when you’ve got prices down the road sitting at 144 cents.”
That 161.9 figure for unleaded was at the West Wollongong BP and was the most expensive in the Illawarra on Tuesday.
Ms Page said there was potential prices could climb to the mid-160 mark in the coming weeks.
“You do have these global factors [affecting prices] but then you also have the local cycle then you also have the service station choosing to set prices,” she said.
“So there are three key factors impacting local prices.
“Given the first two elements are slightly out of our control, we would like to think those fuel stations aren’t increasing their prices as well – we don’t need that triple whammy.”
Extracted from Illawarra Mercury