What determines petrol prices in Australia?

Factors affecting petrol prices

• changes in international prices for refined petroleum products
• movements in the Australian/US dollar exchange rate
• the level of federal and state excise and taxes
• local price cycles.

You can find more information about these factors and their effect on petrol prices in the ACCC's publication, Report on the movement in fuel prices in the September Quarter 2000.

Price cycles

After being asked by the federal government in March 2001, the ACCC prepared a report on price cycles and options to limit them. The report, Reducing fuel price variability, was released on 14 May 2002.

In the report, the ACCC examined key issues such as:

• petrol price cycles in the major metropolitan cities (see pages 12–24 and Appendix A)
• movements of petrol prices within a day (see pages 24–9)
• causes of price cycles (see pages 31–40)
• implications of price cycles for consumers (see pages 41–7)
• options to limit price cycles (see pages 58–81).

The ACCC did not support options to limit price cycles, concluding that they would have either no effect on price cycles or, if they did have an effect, they could lead to higher average retail prices.

Instead, the ACCC recommended that there be a consumer awareness initiative to increase consumers' understanding of price cycles, and to help consumers buy petrol at times when prices are relatively low. This site was established for that purpose. For more information on the report and submissions in response to it see Reducing fuel price variability (December 2001).

More information

The ACCC has a number of publications on petrol price cycles. See Publications: Petrol price cycles.