Petrol retailers urged to cut prices on forecourts after world oil prices tumble

The motoring organisation called on fuel retailers to pass on further savings in the wholesale price brought about by the continued fall in world oil prices.

“This overdue cut would reduce the biggest cost of motoring just in time for Christmas,” a spokesman said.

Reductions the organisation is suggesting would bring the average price of a litre of petrol to 114p and diesel to 120p – prices last seen across the country in March 2010.

Currently, the average price of petrol stands at 120.84p with diesel at 125.43p, whereas at the start of the year petrol was 130.79p a litre and diesel was 138.24p, the spokesman said.

In June this year a barrel of crude reached a 2014 high of $115.36 – and the highest price since September last year – but since then it has fallen dramatically, to a price yesterday of $68.59.

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said: “The tumbling oil price, coupled with a pound that is still strong against the dollar, have led to a phenomenon that many motorists are pretty unfamiliar with – falling pump prices.

“The forecast reduction that retailers should be passing on is the biggest the RAC has seen in recent years, even since petrol began to come down from its record high of 142.48p a litre on April 17, 2012 (diesel 147.93p – April 13, 2012).

“Retailers now have a very reasonable record on transparent pricing so we have no reason to believe that they will not pass on the savings in the wholesale price, we just urge them to do it sooner rather than later to make the point very clearly to motorists that they operate a fair pricing system.

“If they do, we could well see petrol pump prices fall by well over 7p a litre in the next few weeks and diesel by almost 6p a litre.”

With this kind of drop in national average prices, motorists would be expected to see some very low petrol prices – perhaps under 110p a litre, he said.