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Queensland’s peak motoring body has referred petrol retailers to the consumer watchdog over what they think are unfair price hikes in Brisbane that cannot be linked to war in the Middle East.
The RACQ’s Dr Ian Jeffreys said all the major retailers upped their prices out of cycle on Tuesday morning between 9am and 10am.
“Looking at the Brisbane cycle, we should have been at a point when prices were going down,” Jeffreys said.
Instead, prices across the city, led by Ampol and quickly followed by other retailers, went up to as high as $2.19 a litre for standard unleaded.
“Looking at prices this morning [Wednesday], the number of sites charging $2.19 has increased by 260 per cent,” he said.
Jeffries said there were 40 sites charging that price on Tuesday.
“The RACQ is calling out fuel retailers in Brisbane and referring them to the ACCC for possible unconscionable conduct,” he said.
He said similar price hikes had been seen on the Gold Coast.
Consumers should not worry about petrol supply in Brisbane, and reports the price could rise as high as $3 a litre were unlikely to eventuate without unfair pricing, Jeffreys said.
“The fuel companies are good at getting fuel to market, they want to sell fuel,” he said.
“We haven’t seen any supply issues or supply constraints in the Brisbane market for decades and decades.”
The oil market had stayed relatively steady throughout the first three days of the war in Iran, he said, adding the RACQ would expect fuel companies to absorb any increase in the margins.
When markets opened on Monday, the cost of a barrel of oil climbed more than 10 per cent before easing back to rises of about 5 per cent by the end of the day.
Contracts to buy and sell a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, rose from $US72 to finish Monday at $US76.
As a rule of thumb, if prices continue rising, each rise of $US10 a barrel could add 10¢ a litre at the pump in Australia, economists say.
Jeffries said there was evidence the NSW market was having similar issues, but noted the Perth market, which was regulated by the state government, had not.
“Leading into the last state election, RACQ did call for the Queensland government to regulate price increases, to limit those price increases to 5 cents per day,” he said.
“We are still working with the government on this, we are still working through the modelling to see how this would affect the market.
“That type of regulation would have prevented the type of behaviour we have seen in the past 24 hours.”
With Nick Toscano
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