The head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Australians would know in roughly six months if live petrol pricing apps were having a real effect on petrol prices.
Rod Sims, chairman of the ACCC, said court action initiated in 2014 against Coles Express, Woolies, 7-Eleven, Caltex, BP and Informed Sources – which concluded with those companies agreeing to share their private real-time petrol price data with the public – had led to a proliferation of petrol pricing apps on smartphones in recent months.
This was significant for motorists because it had increased public scrutiny of the behaviour of petrol retailers.
Site-specific, near real-time data has been available to consumers since May on the MotorMouth app, and more apps are expected to become available in the coming months.
A New South Wales government initiative called FuelCheck is due to launch in days.
The ACCC’s latest report on the petrol industry shows motorists are paying the lowest petrol prices in 14 years after a substantial fall in international crude oil and refined petrol prices over the past 18 months.
But gross retail margins are also at their highest levels, indicating the full benefits of lower international crude oil and refined petrol prices are not being passed on to motorists, the ACCC said.
The average price for petrol in the five largest cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth) in 2015–16 was 121.7c a litre, the lowest annual average since 2001–02 when adjusted for inflation.
But gross retail margins – the difference between retail prices and published wholesale prices – in the five largest cities averaged 11.2c a litre in 2015–16, the highest level since the ACCC began monitoring them in 2002.
Sims said petrol prices were roughly 3c or 4c a litre higher than they should be, and Australians would know in about six months if the new petrol price apps had helped to bring prices down.
“That 3 to 4 cents is serious money,” he said. “It’s probably $600m a year for Australian motorists.”
Sims has asked the industry to explain why gross retail margins are at their highest level in years, but says higher operating and regulatory costs could have played a role – particularly those associated with price board legislation, vapour recovery legislation and the biofuels mandates in NSW and Queensland.
In NSW FuelCheck will publish fuel prices provided by all fuel retailers in real time.
It will be accessible on any device connected to the internet, and will allow motorists to find the cheapest fuel being sold anywhere in NSW, get directions to any service station, and search for fuel by type or brand.
