THERE’S ALWAYS BEEN A SNEAKING SUSPICION that fuel prices are unrelated to anything other than ensuring oil companies make the biggest profit possible. Of course, the huge excise that governments extract from every litre is another niggling issue, but there are no surprises there.
Now one of the motoring associations has accused Caltex of attempting to manipulate the fuel cycle to fleece unsuspecting motorists as warnings are being made that we’re about to experience our biggest petrol price hike in nearly 25 years.
RAA (South Australia) senior analyst Chris West has suggested that Caltex is repeating its actions in Perth where it successfully disrupted the so-called fuel price cycle, moving the traditional Thursday spike in prices to Tuesday and making the whole system less predictable.
“For the last three spikes in Adelaide over the last nine to 10 weeks, we have seen Caltex move quicker than all the three other majors,” said West. “It is a change in their pricing strategy because previously Caltex at their 30-odd sites would send prices up at a couple in the first 12-hour period and then a couple more in the second 12-hour period. Now they are moving all their sites at once, which is a massive change, and catching motorists out because they can’t see a slow change in the market and react to it. We are encouraging motorists to shop elsewhere.”
In response, a Caltex spokesperson said the nature of any competitive market like retail petrol was that it is inherently unpredictable, and reminded the public that “unlike many of our competitors, Caltex is an Australian business” that employs Australians and contributes to the nation’s economy.
That may well be so, but we at seniordriveraus wonder what other business can so apparently arbitrarily raise and lower prices at will. We all know how petrol prices inevitably spike before holiday weekends, and recently we’ve seen huge disparity in petrol prices in metro and rural areas (not always higher in rural areas, either). Imagine, for a moment, if McDonald’s suddenly decided to increase the price of a Big Mac between 6 and 7 p.m., justifying the price hike on the basis that it’s the period of peak demand and suggesting buyers could get Big Macs at a cheaper price by buying at a different time. It’s patently ridiculous, and yet this is what fuel companies do on a regular basis.
Motorists complain about fuel prices because it is usually the single largest individual purchase they are obliged to make each week (groceries are probably more, but not necessarily all in one purchase transaction). The simple fact is, if you wish to run a car (and most Australians have little choice), then you have no alternative but to buy fuel. The argument about filling up at the “low point in the cycle” (which is what has created this objection to Caltex changing the cycle in the first place) is not always possible or practical for many motorists.
Some time ago, we tracked the price of petrol over three months. It bore absolutely no relationship to the price of crude oil or the fluctuations in the value of the Australian dollar. It was simply a random (although no doubt to a plan) and cynical action by fuel companies to maximise their profits. Some pundits have predicted that doing away with the “price cycle” would actually see motorists paying more for fuel.