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SYDNEY - The consumer watchdog is demanding fuel retailers lower the price of petrol at the bowser within a week, but is stopping short of pushing for government regulation of the industry, saying it would disadvantage motorists.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has given fuel retailers a week to lower petrol prices or face a public lambasting.
Despite a 20-month low in crude oil prices, the cost of fuel at the pump has failed to drop, prompting ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel to lay the hard word on Australia's oil giants.
Mr Samuel said the monitoring of the nation's 3,000 service stations against international benchmarks revealed a price aberration.
"At the present time we're seeing a variation occur, we're seeing the Singapore price falling but the Australian retail price not falling consistently with it," Mr Samuel told the Seven Network.
Prices were expected to fall in the coming week, and if they didn't some "fairly hard" questions would be asked of the oil companies, he said.
However, it was important to maintain flexibility in the marketplace, and government regulation or greater powers for the ACCC was not necessarily the solution, Mr Samuel said.
"The moment that governments step in to regulate petrol prices what happens is that you remove some of that volatility," he said.
"Over 60 per cent of our fuel is bought below an average price line, it's bought at that lower level.
"You do some significant disadvantage to motorists if you say to the government 'step in to regulate prices'."
"The moment we set a price at that level then companies price up to that level and we don't get discounts, there's no reason for it ... we want to see competition push prices down as low as possible."
He dismissed speculation that retail giants Coles and Woolworths were artificially holding up fuel margins to compensate for an increase in their discount petrol vouchers from 4 to 10 cents per litre.
"We have got a competitive marketplace and that marketplace, that competition ought to pull prices down," he said.
"Coles and Woolies don't operate in isolation in this market, you've BP and Mobil and some major independent chains that if they saw a chance to take market share from Coles and Woolies they'd do it in a flash just by pulling prices down."
- AAP
