Fuel Prices

0:00On Friday, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke met with representatives from the fuel industry to discuss some of his concerns surrounding alleged price gouging. He's urged consumers to report any instances of price gouging they believe to be going on to the Consumer Protection Commission. As we would have seen, of course, to see your fuels Ireland, Kevin MacParentland insists that this is not taking place. But despite this, most consumers will have seen that the average price of a liter of petrol or diesel, even from Friday into Saturday jumped by 30 cent per liter. I know I certainly topped up my car midway through last week, uphead about 170 for a liter of diesel, and that climbed to 193 on Sunday. For home heating oil, it's much more of a shock. On the last week, we would have seen that in many places you could get a thousand liters of caracene for 900 euro. The price now, according to I refuse that I is 1600 euro on average across the country. So, do we have an element of price gouging taking

1:02place at our pumps? For more on this, I'm joined by the manager of Osloven and Hansbury Garage in NS Kiran Hogan. Kiran, you're very welcome to the program. Good morning. How are you? I'm very good, Kiran. Kiran, I'd imagine for you, for your staff over the last couple of days, you've probably been on the end of some undeserving criticism. How much control do you and your business have over setting the price at the pump? Well, we have absolutely no control over the cost at the pumps. We get direction from CERTA or our suppliers and we just implement the changes that they said though. And I'm sure a lot of people would have felt that given the sudden, sudden change, they would have thought, there's no way that even many of these stations can be out of their current stocks to justify putting the prices up like that. Would you say that's a fair concern that maybe some consumers would have brought to you? One or two people have said it to me already, but we've delivered twice a week, so like we had a delivery on Wednesday and we had

2:07another delivery on Thursday and even though it was today's, the cost of fuel is very accurate. An interesting point I suppose to remind listeners of and they've got to finger on the post today because we've got this message in straight away with last week, of course, Mihaal Martin stated that we shouldn't be seeing any price shocks because Irish state gets its petrol diesel and oil from the North Sea, which of course is controlled by Norway, so we shouldn't see the backlash of this. Eugene Drennan, the deputy president of the Irish Road College Association, speaking to our news team last week, countered this and said that, well, actually because many of the global superpowers such as China and more rely on Iran and the Persian Gulf for their fuel supply, they're going to look to the other markets such as the North Sea. And that will create, essentially, your supply and demand pressure, so I'm sure that's something maybe you'd like to remind anybody coming to your counter about.

3:21And Kieran, do you even have many options yourself to shop around? I know you said you get the instructions from your provider, but do you have any recourse even to maybe find out where you can get a cheap, pretty ill or price compare? No, we're tied into a trading agreement with Circa, so our hands are tied at the moment, isn't it? One advice would you give to consumers? Would you say maybe fill up straightaway in case things get volatile? Is there any, I suppose, manageable steps that they can take? It's very difficult to say it because it's, it's, they're volatile times at all, and I don't want to start, nor have clear people panicking, but like at the moment, the prices are going to continue to rise as far as I can see. Yeah, and have you noticed any new habits from consumers? And maybe even, I suppose, at times we would have seen similar shocks back in 2022, does anybody behave your tend to change? Well, last week we had a lot of people just doing a big fill. Today, now

4:26they're coming in and they're only probably just tapping up now at the moment. Back in 22, something similar, all right, but again, the government were slow to act and reduce the exercise at the time. I think it's waste something like nearly three months before they implemented any cost, the exercise packs, and now we have carbon tax on top of that as well, so it all adds up. And I'm sure that's something that might make service station providers pull their hair out at times is that while you might hear the backlash yourself, as Eugene Trenton again pointed out to us last week, and many of their listeners air with their texts is that over a euro per liter of fuel is currently going directly in taxation, whether that's for the national oil reserve fee, whether that's for carbon tax, whether that's for exercise duty, and more, should the government be doing a bit more here? I think the government should have been proactive. They knew this was coming last week, so I think they should have been putting something in place even for this week to try and just can't think down a bit.

5:29And I suppose what the government has said in recent years, maybe in the past, even when we've seen this, is that sometimes it might not be right to act too soon because it could get worse. I mean, I suppose as we saw back in 2022, we saw at times the price of petrol and diesel could even go as high as 208, 210, so maybe he had the right to say, look, we'll observe it for now and maybe relax in the future. I think the government knows what's happening. They're aware, I think they're they're just very slow to act. Yeah. And that's I suppose not just a frustration for customers, but it must be one for you as well, Karen, because I'm sure you want to reassure people this best you can. Of course, like I said earlier, our customers are very well aware of the price at the point. They're at the shop around. And we in 2022, with a lot of people

6:31are always complaining, but this time around, it seems to be almost sympathetic towards us because they know that we're not doing anything or we can't do anything at the moment. And I know Karen, your station deals in petrol and diesel and if you will for your vehicle, but home heating oil is that I think is the one which is really disturbed people, the price hike there and I and I suppose look just just just even as I'm sure homeowner here said, that's something on a personal level that you have to deal with as well. Is that something that gave you a bit of a fright when you saw the price is going up? Oh, definitely, we were lucky that we could see films at the start of February because we actually were nervous, but I know this people here are working with us to try to art a few last week and it was going again, it was going up every morning and even when they were they had an ordinance, they didn't know the price that we're going to get it as until it was delivered. Yeah, and it's there really that we do have to, I suppose, depend on events and the rest of the

7:37world to see what our oil prices are going to be and I suppose that kind of gives rise to the expression global that a lot at least maybe on the other side of the world, it's still very much affecting our local economy and as we've heard the college industries say in recent weeks as well as that anytime something is even delivered to a store or supermarket it comes off the back of a truck. So do you think we can expect increases in I suppose the price of groceries as well because if the college industry is paying more for its food, if that truck has to get to your service station to deliver its palliola bread, beef, flour, eggs, milk, whatever it is, and we are we likely to see the hikes across the board? I think it has to happen because transport companies are going to just pass on their costs and eventually the costs of products are going to go up, the shops are going to have to increase their prices the products as well because otherwise we're going to be making our last. And it's really not a nice position

8:37to put store owners and managers like yourself in we really just have to hope that this doesn't continue for a lengthy period but I mean it really comes down to it like the elephant in the room is are we going to see supports if it does? Well I hope we do see supports, I think the government like it said earlier should have been proactive on this, should have been the theology had the transport industry up last week, they should have been reassuring them that they were going to act at some stage but we haven't heard anything as of yet. Yeah and we do have to hope that events there stabilise and we are all watching them very closely and like even we've seen today that Iran has elected a new Supreme Leader, elected might not be the right word there but has certainly selected a new Supreme Leader which is now mushed about Kemeni, the son of the previous Ayatollah and by that indication we could

9:38be looking at a couple more weeks at least of Iran digging their heels in probably an ongoing conflict here. I think so and it will impact on few because you know yourself it's very quick to go up and a little bit slower to come back down to what it was before any conflicts. Yeah and Kiran I think the last one I've put you before we go is you might be able to give a bit of clarity to this listener who's just sent a text into us. This listener is of the opinion that there is definitely price gouging going on. I won't say we're exactly but basically the price was 189.9 in clear at of the weekend and this listener says when they came back two hours later it went up to 192.9 yesterday evening so a difference of four sent there. This listener claims in the space of two hours is that something that can happen?

10:39I don't see prices fluctuates every day and it might have had a delivery on Sunday that might have been at a higher price than what they had predicted but as I said our prices are dictated by our supplier service so they they send the sound updates every morning or even in the afternoon in some places so I don't think there's any kind of price gouging going on it's just the fact that the market is like that at the moment. I suppose just finally Kiran is there anything the industry needs right now to help it through this period? As I said earlier the government could have been proactive on this because of reduced the sales rate as we get back in 2022 and it took them three months to take any action the last time I just knew this was coming they could have had something already just to ease us for everybody because if they aren't in person the street has been this.

11:40Kiran Hogan the manager of Osloven and Hansbury Filling Station on the Kilaros Road Kiran thank you very much for joining us in morning focus today.