- Jul 13, 2015
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- Hawthorn
Because for some silly reason, Texas crude prices are often quoted here which make virtually no difference to petrol prices in Australia.
We source most of our fuel from Singapore and because most of refining capacity has been eroded over the past 50 years, we have to pay the FOB price on refined fuel from overseas.
Its not even that. The govt allows local refiners to charge the Singapore price no matter how much they produce and no matter the price it costs them.
This is because in theory they could export the fuel they refine overseas and get higher prices.
Of course what it does mean is allow them to increase prices to the Singapore price instantly when they go up, and take all the time in the world to bring the prices down when Singapore goes down.
We also have an ACCC that was unable to prove collusion even when they had proof that petrol companies were telling eachother what prices they were going to set - because its only really collusion if they then say "oh okay thanks we will use that price too"... they can just say nothing while setting the price. Thankyou garbage laws and drunk judges who dont care about the petrol price because they are too pickled to drive.