Petrol drops below £1.45-a-litre for the first time in 18 months

There is some financial relief for motorists at the fuel pumps this week as petrol has fallen below £1.45 a liter for the first time in a year and a half.

The average price of a liter of unleaded lead fell to 144.64 pence on Monday, the lowest since early November 2021, according to the RAC.

Diesel has also dropped below £1.54 a litre, reaching 153.76 pence yesterday – the cheapest since February 2022.

Based on average UK fuel prices on Sunday, the cost of filling a 55-litre family car with petrol is now less than £80 (£79.55), while a tank of diesel has fallen to less than £85 (£84.57).

Since peaking at 191.5p (July 3, 2022) last summer, petrol has dropped by 47p-a-litre (46.86p), saving drivers £25.77 each time they fill their fuel tank (£105.32 vs. £79.55).

Diesel, which hit an all-time high of 199.09p on June 25 last year, is down 45.5p (45.33p), saving drivers £24.93 per tank (£109.50 vs £84.57).

Simon Williams, fuel spokesman for the RAC, said: ‘The fact that the price of unleaded lead has fallen below 145 cents a liter for the first time in 18 months is good news for the country’s 19 million petrol car drivers.

“This means it is now almost £26 cheaper to fill up a petrol family car this summer compared to last year when a liter hit the record price of 191.5p.”

Given that diesel is still almost 10 pence more expensive than petrol, Williams says this shouldn’t be the case, as the wholesale price of diesel is now 4 pence less than unleaded.

“Drivers of the UK’s 12 million diesel cars and countless businesses that rely on them to fuel their vehicles would be paying 20 pence less per liter as the wholesale price is now 4 pence less than petrol,” he explained. out.

With wholesale prices of both petrol and diesel supplied at 110p and 105p-a-litre respectively, the RAC calculates that drivers should pay no more than 142p and 137p at the pump, even with retail margins of 10p-a-litre.

The automotive group pointed to an independent retailer in Shropshire who currently charges £131.9p for diesel, which is more than £22p below the UK average.

Another small service station in Wales sells both petrol and diesel for 129.9 pence a litre, which is up to 24 pence less than average prices across the country.

“We hope this finally embarrasses the nation’s largest retailers into significantly lowering their pump prices,” Williams said.

The news of cheaper fuel prices comes a day after the Competition and Markets Authority said it had found evidence ‘fuel margins have increased throughout the retail market, especially for supermarkets, over the past four years’.

“As a result of these increasing margins, average supermarket pump prices in 2022 appear to be about 5 pence per liter more expensive than they would have been if their average percentage margins had remained at 2019 levels,” the CMA said.

It is also concerned about the ‘continued higher margins on diesel compared to petrol’ so far this year, which ‘appear to be taking longer than expected’.

The watchdog’s chief executive, Sarah Cardell, said they were not satisfied with evidence from supermarkets, so they will call for “formal interviews to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

In 2019 average margins were 6.5 pence for every liter of petrol and 6.9 pence for diesel, the RAC says.

The calculation based on current prices shows that the retail margin on unleaded is 10.8 pence per litre, which is about 8 percent of the total cost of fuel.

The average margin on diesel is more than three times greater than before the pandemic, reaching 22.9 pence per liter and accounting for 15 percent of the total price consumers pay.

The CMA’s full report will be published in early July.