Aidan Curtis
FUEL prices are set to head back up in the coming weeks as the six-month fuel excise cut comes to an end.
Back in March, the then-federal Liberal Government announced it would halve the fuel excise for six months to combat rising fuel prices.
That cut was set to expire on Thursday, September 29, with experts not expecting the current Federal Government to announce an extension.
RAA senior manager mobility and automotive policy and fuel spokesperson Mark Borlace said consumers should not expect to see prices go back up immediately.
Mr Borlace said the excise is paid when it leaves the terminal gate, not when it is sold at the bowser.
“We don’t expect [service stations] to have a 25 cent increase on the day and we don’t expect it probably for a week or two,” he said.
“They’ve got cheap fuel in the tanks, they shouldn’t be living on the ignorance of people thinking it’s just gone up 25 cents in a day.
“Depending on how quickly each service station sells it, if one sells all their fuel within a week, in a week they’re going to have the dear fuel back in their tanks.”
He said he expects regional towns to get a little bit more time, predicting up to three weeks before all service stations in town return to pre-cut prices.
“We don’t think it’ll be dramatic and we don’t think it’ll be uniform, but probably by two or three weeks it will have flowed through the whole gate,” he said.
“Within a fortnight, you’d expect to see the base prices being around $1.80 or $1.90.
“They’ve [servos] had notice of this for six months, they know that the price is going to come up, so they’ve had time to strategise what they’re going to do with it.”
While consumers can expect to see fuel prices eventually go up, Mr Borlace said it might not stay that way in the medium-term.
“It’ll be a bit of a hit, probably the equivalent of $15 it adds to a typical car fill up,” he said.
“The only good news is we’ve had a slow trending down of crude oil prices over the last five months – in fact, it has dropped $20 in the last month.
“The medium term, the world price spike will continue to trend down slowly.”
Mr Borlace advised people to continue using apps to compare fuel prices near them to find the cheapest option to save money where possible.
