Petrol prices fell by an average of 10.3¢ a litre for the first time in almost two years in Australia’s biggest cities between June and September.
The national consumer watchdog’s latest petrol monitoring snapshot shows that average prices dropped by 11.6¢ a litre to 178.2 in Sydney and 4.5¢ a litre to 184.8 in Melbourne.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy chair Mick Keogh said that while international factors drove up prices earlier this year, they had contributed to price drops in the September quarter.
The price fall reflected a 34 per cent drop in international refined petrol prices due to weaker global demand and fears of a global recession.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine had also contributed to changes in crude oil prices. The Asia-Pacific benchmark monthly average Mogas 95 prices decreased from 138.7 to 91.6¢ a litre from June to September.
The ACCC had predicted prices would rise by about 25.3¢ a litre after the federal government restored the full fuel excise on September 29 after halving it for six months from March 30. But its monitoring of price changes before the excise was restored and in the six weeks after show that retail petrol prices in most locations increased by less than it expected.
“We have looked at the impact of the excise being restored, and, allowing for movements in international prices and the price cycles in the major cities, we found only a small number of unexpected increases in average retail petrol prices,” Keogh said.
The price fall reflected a 34 per cent drop in international refined petrol prices.
Daily average petrol prices increased by between 15.9¢ a litre and 21.9¢ a litre between September 28 and November 9 in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. The ACCC analysis shows that price cycles peaked in all four cities in the days before, or just after, the full fuel excise was restored. It then generally decreased in the following weeks as part of the regular price cycles.
In Perth, average petrol prices increased by 34.1¢ a litre in the six weeks after the excise was restored. However, the restoration of the full fuel excise coincided with the increasing phase of its petrol price cycle.
The ACCC analysis found 18 regional locations had price increases above 25.3¢ a litre.
The analysis reported a couple of locations where the retail price increases were higher than the combined increase in excise and international prices. The ACCC said it would further examine these locations.
For regional areas, average retail petrol prices were 186.9 a litre in the quarter, a fall of 6.2¢ a litre from the June quarter. Regional prices were 9.2¢ a litre higher than average prices in the five largest cities.
Extracted from The Sydney Morning Herald