Fuel price monitoring during the current Middle Eastern conflict

The ACCC has significantly increased monitoring, analysis and reporting on fuel markets to provide increased transparency on pricing movements and their causes.

On 13 March, we began publishing weekly reports on petrol and diesel prices across the major cities and 190 regional locations.

On 1 April, the Commonwealth Government reduced the excise on fuel for 3 months. This includes an agreement with the States and Territories regarding GST funding.

The ACCC wrote to major and a range of smaller suppliers expressing our expectation that savings were passed on promptly to consumers.

We are closely analysing price movements in our weekly reports to assess the extent to which the cut is passed on. 

On 19 March, the ACCC announced an investigation into allegations of anti-competitive conduct in relation to diesel availability in regional and rural Australia.

This investigation is ongoing, and the ACCC is yet to form a view.

On 2 April, the ACCC sent substantiation notices to a number of businesses operating in regional and remote areas that were imposing sizeable fuel surcharges or levies.

We continue to assess reports of alleged misrepresentations about fuel surcharges and will issue further notices where required.

While many business costs have genuinely increased, the ACCC reminds businesses not to take advantage of this by claiming excessive price increases are due to increasing fuel costs unless this is actually the case.

Australian consumers and businesses continue to experience significant impacts from higher prices and remain concerned about some pricing conduct.

We received more than 3,700 reports about fuel during March, which represented 29 per cent of all reports to the ACCC that month. In the 7 days to 15 April we received more than 390 contacts, amounting to 16% of all contacts during that time.

The ACCC assesses these complaints to use in potential investigations.

On 20 March, the ACCC granted urgent interim authorisation to the Australian Institute of Petroleum and its members to coordinate in managing supply chain issues.

This allows competitors to engage in conduct that provides public benefits but that may otherwise breach competition laws. The ACCC conditions were imposed to mitigate any risk of lessening competition through disadvantaging independent wholesalers and distributors.

The ACCC is engaging with a number of other impacted sectors. We are ready to assess and approve authorisations where they would help ensure continued supply of goods into and across Australia.

We are also working closely with cross-government initiatives including the National Coordination Mechanism and the Energy Senior Officials Group.

The ACCC is working closely with the State and Territory consumer and fair trading regulators including by exchanging data and intelligence and coordinating the use of enforcement tools.

State and Territory regulators are reporting instances of conduct to the ACCC for investigation under the national Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC is referring reports to States and Territories where the alleged conduct may fall under local laws.

State and Territory regulators are actively monitoring compliance, both with local laws and the Australian Consumer Law. They have increased site visits to investigate consumer reports and have issued infringement notices to retailers found to have breached mandatory reporting requirements.

Common non-compliance observed by State and Territory regulators includes:

• failure to report on fuel price caps or changes (which must be reported by retailers promptly under various jurisdictional fuel price transparency schemes)
• selling fuel at a different price to that reported price.

We are also aware of some cafes and restaurants imposing ‘fuel surcharges’ on food and drinks without prior or sufficient notice to consumers. The ACCC will leverage State and Territory ACL regulator intelligence to understand and interrogate these issues as they emerge.