Petrol prices have jumped nearly 10c a litre overnight in Canberra, as Australia suffers the “double whammy” of increasing international petrol prices and a decreasing dollar.
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On Wednesday morning, a number of service stations were selling unleaded fuel for 157.9c a litre, a rise of about 9c on last week's average price, and Australian Competition and Consumer Petrol Commissioner Joe Dimasi said there was not much relief on the horizon.
“The price of petrol is going up right around the country, and it's going up because the Australian dollar has been going down,” Mr Dimasi said.
"So we've gone within a couple of months from [one Australian dollar buying US] $1.05 to around 90c and that in itself has put up the price of petrol around 10c.
"The two big factors which affect the price of petrol for us in Australia are the dollar and the international price of oil and trade of petrol. Normally either both go up or both go down, so they tend to cushion each other a little bit.
“What's happening now is we're seeing a little bit of movement up in the price of oil and the price of international-traded petrol and we're seeing the dollar go down, so they're reinforcing each other in pushing the price of petrol up … which makes it very difficult for motorists,” he said.
While Canberra motorists were relatively shielded from some national price rises last week, Mr Dimasi said the hefty hike overnight was likely a result of a build-up in price pressure with more expensive stock, and when one outlet succumbed, the others followed suit.
But NRMA regional director Alan Evans said the size of the increase was a cash grab by the oil companies.
“We would have expected to see over the course of this cycle a 3c to 4c rise, but not what we're seeing,” he said.
“They think the ACT is a soft touch, they know we're very dependent on cars, they know we're an economy that probably on average has a higher household income than others, and we will continue to buy petrol, whereas in other areas people have options with public transport.
“We need to keep hitting politicians to make sure that they're looking at it … and you have to keep putting pressure on the oil companies.”
Mr Dimasi said that while national prices might go down “a touch”, it would depend on the dollar and Singapore benchmark for petrol, which our price was more closely linked to than the crude oil price, which had risen due to instability in the Middle-East.
Last week in Singapore, petrol prices rose by 5.1 per cent to a 15-month high.
As a result, CommSec is predicting national pump prices to keep rising.
"Ongoing increases in global oil prices combined with a lower Aussie dollar have continued to lift the wholesale (terminal gate) price. Around 2-3 cents is likely to be added to the pump price over the next 7-10 days," it said in a statement.