The oil crisis has not only caused petrol prices to soar, it has revealed just how little competition there is among the big oil companies. A couple weeks ago the ACCC announced that it would be looking into uncompetitive behaviour by petrol companies in the rural areas.
The article shows how petrol price rises have been affected in different parts of Australia.
https://thepoint.com.au/news/260327-petrol-prices-are-soaring-in-sync-collusion-or-coincidence
Wait, the rest of the country doesn’t have a fuel cycle?? Huh.
Pro: you can reliably get “cheap” fuel on a Tuesday.
Con: Everyone gets fuel on Tuesdays, and you will sit in traffic to fuel up. And if you run out of fuel on a Wednesday or Thursday, you’re gonna be (even more) broke.
This was the case in Melbourne too, when I was working at a service station back in my Uni days.
Not sure when things changed, but apparently it moved to a fortnightly cycle at some point, before completely losing any semblance of predictability post-COVID.
I’m pretty sure Shell and Ampol are the main culprits. Other stations don’t seem shift as dramatically.
Other cities do, they just don’t show on this graph. You can normally track them on the ACCC’s website. Perth having a cycle isn’t unusual, but it is unusually short and extremely consistent compared to those of other cities.