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Fuel supply chain unlikely to deliver £1 per litre petrol by Christmas for all UK drivers, says FairFuelUK

So says the FairFuelUK campaign following yesterday’s All Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Fuel for Motorists and Hauliers. The meeting was led by Jason McCartney (Conservative MP for the Colne Valley) and Rob Flello (Labour MP for Stoke on Trent South) and attended by organisations including Platts, Portland Fuel, Harvest Fuels, Prax Petroleum, the Petrol Retailers Association, Downstream fuel consultants, Fuel card businesses and the Supermarket giant Asda.

The meeting covered the subject of pump pricing strategies and attempted to ascertain when oil prices fall or rise, how such changes impact at the pumps for consumers and how they are calculated.

According to the RAC, motorists could see petrol fall to £1 a litre or under in time for Christmas if retailers pass on savings as oil prices continue to fall. Yet FairFuelUK and MPs attending the APPG meeting said that they had learned there is no set formula for calculating pricing, with factors including fuel card costs to retailers said to possibly play a part in pricing diesel higher for 50% of UK drivers.

APPG chairman Jason McCartney MP said: “We learned a considerable amount today that regrettably only tells us the pump pricing process is even muddier than first thought. The APPG will continue to investigate the pricing processes involved so that we can help millions of drivers to predict what they will pay more accurately when oil prices fluctuate.”

Howard Cox, secretariat to the APPG and founder of the FairFuelUK Campaign, added: “It’s clear after MPs asking fuel supply chain experts, that there is no clear pricing formula we can all call upon to work out how pump prices are calculated. It is a haphazard opportunistic process and attributed by the supply chain experts to market forces and most definitely it seems how much profit they can get away with. Thank heavens, as all agreed at the APPG, some reluctantly, it’s the supermarkets such as Asda who are driving prices down for their customers to fairer levels. Without them we’d be paying even more at the pumps. But let’s not forget at £1.00 per litre the Government will be taking 78% in tax every time we fill up. Still the highest in Europe!’

A full report of the first APPG into pump pricing inquiry will be published shortly.

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Natalie Middleton

Natalie has worked as a fleet journalist for over 20 years, previously as assistant editor on the former Company Car magazine before joining Fleet World in 2006. Prior to this, she worked on a range of B2B titles, including Insurance Age and Insurance Day.