Too slow to fall - Oil prices for consumers

If it requires the naivety of Icarus, who believed he could fly to the sun on wings made of wax and feathers, to believe that fuel distributors and retailers pass on the benefit of greatly reduced international oil prices to consumers at the earliest opportunity, then the gap between forecourt prices and plummeting oil prices confirms it.

Last week, world oil prices fell to their lowest in 12 years, and hit $32 dollars a barrel. However, the prices expected by Irish retailers reflect a completely different scale.

It is hard not to believe that consumers are once again being exploited, and that suppliers are not taking the lion’s share of the benefit from today’s very low oil prices. All the usual guff about how it takes time for changing prices to work their way though the system will be advanced, even though repeated evidence shows how quickly consumers face higher prices if the graph goes in the opposite direction — as it inevitably will.