A garage in Birmingham has become the first in the UK to drop the price of petrol below £1 a litre.
The forecourt on the A435 between Kings Heath and the Maypole is now charging 99.7p a litre, according to the Birmingham Mail.
It's the first time drivers have seen petrol at under £1 a litre in more than four years - but given the almighty collapse in oil prices and the drop in demand following coronavirus travel bans and lockdowns across the world, it looks likely to become more common.
AA’s fuel price spokesman Luke Bosdet said: “We expect other retailers to follow shortly. However, drivers need to remember that falling pump prices shouldn’t be an incentive to break the ‘lockdown’.
“But, where there is a chance to cut costs for beleaguered households whose income has fallen dramatically due to the impact of coronavirus, cheaper petrol and diesel is very welcome.”
In the past year alone, the price of a barrel of oil has fallen from a high of $74 a barrel to below $30 today - the lowest it's been since the late 1990s.
The last time fuel was spotted under £1 a litre was in February 2016 when the UK average price of petrol fell as low as 101.80p a litre but supermarkets were charging much less.
You have to go back another 8 years - to the 2008 financial crash - before you find fuel the next time fuel was that cheap.
“In the 2008-2009 price crash, it was also two independent forecourts, one in Scotland and one in the Midlands, that first broke below the £1 a litre mark," Bosdet said.
Sadly, we're unlikely to see a return to 1990s petrol prices anytime soon, thanks to a series of tax hikes on fuel since then, meaning the majority of the price paid at the pumps now goes to the Treasury, rather than on the fuel itself.
However the cost of filling up is certain to come down with no signs of a recovery in demand for oil for weeks and potentially months to come.
