As most grey nomads who have been on the road a while will have noticed, fuel prices have been relatively low for a while now.
Indeed, the Australian Competition and Consumer has just revealed that petrol prices have been at their lowest quarterly level since 1999 during the first three months of this year. And that has made a massive difference to many Big Lap budgets.
People who set off around Australia last July year, calculating their approximate fuel costs based on the bowser prices at the time would have enjoyed a massive windfall.
In its sixth quarterly report on the country’s petroleum industry, the competition regulator says the average price in the five largest cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth) was 111 cents per litre. That is apparently 13.4 cents per litre lower than in the December quarter of last year, and 22.2 cents per litre cheaper than in last year’s September quarter.
However, grey nomads filling up with diesel and spending a lot of time in the bush may have noticed some tell-tale signs that the fuel price tide might slowly be turning again. The Beef Central newspaper reports that, since diesel in prices in rural areas hit a 10-year low in December, the price at the bowser has been steadily climbing again … thanks in no small part to the declines of the Aussie dollar. Australia is only about 50% self-sufficient in fuel oil.
The paper’s research shows that, while back in March the average price for litre of diesel in regional Australia was $1.12, last week that had risen to $1.18.9 per litre, with the biggest rises being in Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria.
The good news however is that – based on current regional diesel prices it would apparently cost travellers $164 to fill both the main and auxiliary tanks of a Toyota LandCruiser 200 Series (138 litres). According to Beef Central calculations, that is still a very welcome $25 less than it would have cost for the same fill back in July of last year.
I’ve just been through my spread sheets for 2000 and fuel back then was 10 cents cheaper than now. I don’t know where ACCC gets its info from