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An online calculator is helping motorists come to grips with the components of petrol and diesel costs.
It shows the Government's take on every litre of petrol or diesel sold is more than double the refining, transport and margins cost. The calculator - at http://fuel.nzh1.com - uses the cost of Dubai crude oil, the exchange rate, average pump prices and Government levies to derive the refining, transport and margin component of pump prices.
Using these derived figures, predictions can be undertaken on the effect of the two main variables - crude oil price and the US exchange rate - into the future.
With a "marker" retail price of $2.172 a litre of 91 octane petrol, the calculator shows the cost of the crude oil component is $1.049.
But Government levies (52.55c) combined with GST (24.1c) make up more than 35 per cent of the retail price.
That is more than double the 35.6c costs of refining, transport and margins.
Harvey Bell of the ValueAdd company, which created the calculator, said a "further surprise" was the refining, transport and margins component of diesel was nearly 80 per cent more than petrol, at 63.8c a litre.
