I’ve written about petrol prices before, I’ve pretty sure someone is making huge amounts of money from oil, but nobody will ever say who it is. The cost of fuel in Australian is linked to the cost of fuel in Singapore for reasons best understood by the fuel companies. I’m pretty sure that the whole point of this is for companies to make money, to increase their profits and return healthy dividends to share holders. Yeah, yeah, that’s the way our economic system works, and to tinker with it would be like removing the anus from a whale – you know, gets really big and then explodes.
Its worth reading the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (The ACCC – that’s the A triple C) website to get a feeling for how the price of unleaded petrol in Australia is determined. My understanding is that we import 20% of our unleaded petrol. That means we must refine or somehow make the other 80%. The website says that we use the Singapore benchmark as its the largest refinery in this part of the world, and the most likely place that we would purchase our fuel. (By we, I guess I mean the fuel companies)
The whole pricing of fuel in Australia is complex, really complex. The ACCC struggled to determine what was really going on, and it its report in December 07 says that the price cycle of Australian fuel is an enigma.
However, and forgive this Llama’s limited understanding, surely it can’t be right that when importing only 20% of a product that the domestic price is determined by that import? Is simply crazy, and no doubt its done to maximise the profit of the oil companies, not to assist consumers in getting a better deal.
Having said all that, the rising cost of fuel, for reasons that no one really explains, has the side effect of forcing us to reduce the amount we consume, that can only be good for the environment.
Oh, and whoever it is that is making the big dollars here, stop being greedy and do something to help the world.