MOTORISTS COULD be in for some bad news in the days ahead as the price of oil continues to climb on international markets with the conflict in North Africa and speculator jitters piling pressure on commodity prices.
The price of the benchmark Brent crude ended last week at just over $125 a barrel, its highest levels since August 2008, but still some way of the peaks of nearly $150 a barrel it reached in July of that year.
Analysts are predicting there will be another upward surge this week and that will inevitably put pressure on forecourt prices across Ireland.
For every $3 that is added on to the price of a barrel of oil on the international markets, Irish consumers can expect to see a litre of petrol increase by one cent within weeks.
If oil were to match the record highs of around $150 a barrel it reached in 2008, Irish consumers could end up paying an additional 12 cent a litre compared with today’s prices. This would add a further €216 to the annual cost of keeping a car on the road for the average motorist.
According to the pricing website pumps.ie, the average price of a litre of petrol is currently €1.49, while a litre of diesel costs, on average, three cent less.
A lobby group representing thousands of truck drivers has deferred a decision on protests aimed at highlighting the rising cost of fuel, and gave the Government a week to meet it to discuss the issue.
At the annual conference of the Irish Road Haulage Association in Limerick on Saturday, motions were tabled proposing the withholding of tax and backing strike action. It wants meetings with the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, and the Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar, to work out ways of offsetting the rising cost of diesel for the industry.
Association president Vincent Caulfield said members were struggling to survive soaring costs, and were very angry.
He said the group had delayed direct action to give the Government an opportunity to respond.
As the meeting began he said he had received a call from Mr Varadkar’s secretary “to say he would meet us in the week after Easter.
“We haven’t had a response from the Department of Finance yet and it is very disappointing because Finance deal with fuel duty.”
He said that following the call from Mr Varadkar’s office, the meeting “decided we would give them a week. We will notify them on Monday [today] morning that we had a very angry meeting.
“We need a meeting with them or a commitment to a meeting by next Saturday, or otherwise a different course of action will have to be taken,” he said.
The association has called for the introduction of a fuel duty rebate for tax-compliant hauliers and for permission for licensed freight carriers to pass on carbon taxes to customers, as they do with VAT.
It said the rising cost of diesel had increased the running costs of an average truck by up to €15,000 a year.
