Petrol costs ‘rise by 2c’ despite fall in oil prices

PETROL retailers refused to comment on a claim that the price of fuel at service stations has increased this week despite the continuing fall in international oil prices.

While a barrel of crude oil costs about $105 on worldwide markets — its lowest since February — petrol and diesel prices went up by 2c per litre on many Irish forecourts early this week.

That’s according to consumer chief Dermott Jewell, who called for oil price falls to be passed onto service station customers.

“Even in my own village it had gone down to 121.9c per litre last Friday,” said Mr Jewell, “and by Monday it had gone up to 123.9c”.

A service station owner had told him that prices were about to go up by 2c per litre for petrol and diesel, he said.

“It was exactly how that station owner had said it would be.”

While some timelag was to be expected in implementing oil decrease prices at a local level, the Consumers’ Association of Ireland chief executive said there had been complaints about the delay.

“Every time we raise this with the distributors, they say it’s coming down when they’re accepting a delivery,” said Mr Jewell.

A spokesman for the Irish Petroleum Industry Association (IPIA) refused to comment on the claims, on the basis that distributors are precluded from talking about current or future prices.

He didn’t deny the report, however: “If prices have gone up this week, it’s simply the forces of supply and demand on what’s coming out of a refinery and what’s going into a refinery,” he said.

“The market in Ireland is intensely competitive and the margins are tight.”

He denied any suggestion, however, that distributors had issued a “directive” to service stations ordering a price rise for petrol and diesel, saying that it would be “illegal” for anybody to dictate the prices.

Asked why prices of petrol haven’t come down as much as international oil costs, the spokesman said: “The price of what comes out of a refinery obviously has some relation to the product going into that refinery, but there could be a timelag.”

AA public affairs manager Conor Faughnan predicted that the current low in oil prices would be reflected on Irish forecourts early next month.

“Roughly speaking, the price of international oil now will be reflected in the retail price paid by Irish retailers in about four or five weeks,” he said.

“We regularly get the query from people, ‘how is it that as soon as the price of oil goes up, they put the price of petrol up, but when it goes down they delay?’.

“On a few occasions we’ve caught individual service stations doing that, but in broad terms that’s not what happens,” said Mr Faughnan.