I drive a dual fuel petrol/gas vehicle. Due to economy reasons, my preferred fuel is gas. When I bought the vehicle around June last year, gas was 64.5 cents per litre, and it stayed steady at that price, seemingly immune from the constant fluctuations in the price of petrol. I was aware that as of 1 January, there was to be a small increase, about two or three cents, due to a change in government tax arrangements or some such. In about mid-January, the price jumped to around 75 cents. A day later, at my local, the Woolies servo at the Jerra shops, it jumped again to around 80 cents, but pretty quickly went back to 75 cents.
I took a trip to Melbourne over the weekend, and it was around 73 to 75 cents most places, though one servo on the Hume had it at close to 90 cents. However, diverting into Wangaratta, I found it for 65 cents. Great – filled the tank. Monday morning, I filled up in Jerra at around 75 cents. Monday afternoon at Jerra, it had climbed to 85 cents, and Tuesday afternoon to 90 cents.
Driving in this morning, servos along Canberra Avenue seemed to have it around the 74 cents. I didn’t go past Jerra so don’t know if they’d dropped again.
The thing is – and thanks if you’re still with me – as a percentage increase, these jumps are very high. If you go from 64.5 cents to 75 cents, that’s a 16% increase in price. If you did that to petrol at say $1.40 a litre, that would have the price rising to $1.62 a litre. If you look at the increase of Woolies at Jerra from 64.5 to 90 cents a litre that’s a 39% increase. In less than two months, kids.
This is my first time running a vehicle on gas, so I’m not aware is this sort of increase is seasonal, or driven by something else. FSM forbid that I should think Woolies Jerra is price gouging! I’m very interested to hear any insights Rioters have on this, and also, if there is any avenues of investigation – that is, is it the sort of matter that the ACCC would look at? I do know that I lose all economic benefit of running my vehicle on gas if the price is 90 cents a litre and may as well revert to petrol, which would be a shame.
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