The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Petrol pump profiteers exploiting Fife drivers.
PETROL: Price can vary up to £14 a tank between city supermarkets and shires
Motorists who are among the most reliant on their cars are being exploited by pump profiteering, new figures suggest.
Campaigners says Scotland’s rural drivers are the victims of “highway robbery”, as the price of petrol varies by up to £14 a tank between built-up areas and their suburbs.
Fair Fuel UK’s analysis for The Courier reveals some huge gulfs between the cost of unleaded within a 25-mile radius of 13 parts of the country.
Perth had one of the widest gaps in Scotland, with those in the city paying as little as 120.7p a litre, compared with a high of 140.9p elsewhere in the shire.
Paying that higher rate could cost Perthshire families an extra £600 a year.
There are also big variances between different parts of the country, according to the “pumpwatch” figures covering May 8. Angus motorists could not find unleaded for cheaper than 121.7p a litre on that day, while those in the centres of Edinburgh and Glasgow were able to fill up for as little as 115.7p.
Kirstene Hair, the Angus MP who is chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Fair Fuel, said the figures show a “deep unfairness” for households already facing budget pressures.
“Many constituents in Angus depend heavily on their cars to get to and from work, due to poor public transport links,” the Scottish Conservative said.
“This situation will be reflected in many other areas and they should not be exploited. I believe my constituents, and people across Scotland, deserve greater transparency about what they are paying at the pump.”
Howard Cox, who is the chairman of the Fair Fuel UK pressure group, said prices are being inflated in rural areas, as profits are squeezed in towns and cities because of supermarket competition.
“There are huge variations in the amount of profits taken at the pump, largely depending on how far you go from the centre of an area,” he said.
“Where there are supermarkets, prices are driven down considerably.
“But in more rural areas, prices are both higher and the amount of profit shoots up.
“Motorway service stations exploit drivers even further, literally highway robbery.”
Service stations say their prices are higher because many are open aroundthe-clock and run more services than normal forecourts, while also paying high rents. Garages in remote areas argue fuel is more expensive there because of bigger transport and supply costs.
Motorist groups suggest that mass avoidance of the most expensive pumps will help drive prices down.
Last week, the RAC warned that the pockets of drivers would be hit by a “toxic combination” of rising oil prices through the weak pound, production curbing from OPEC and geopolitical instability.
It is not the first time high prices at rural petrol pumps have been described as highway robbery, yet a solution has still to be found. Analysis for this newspaper has revealed disappointing but – frustratingly – frankly unsurprising news that motorists most reliant on cars are being exploited when it comes to fuel prices.
While it seems a cruel irony that those in the most remote areas should be punished in this way, service stations cite higher supply costs to service rural areas.
Such a justification may not be entirely baseless, but surely there can be no excuse for the wildly varying costs.
Motorists in Perthshire, for example, could pay up to £600 more a year in petrol costs when compared to those using the same amount of fuel in Edinburgh. That huge disparity has inevitably led some to suggest there is an element of profiteering at play.
The huge gulf was this weekend described as representing a “deep unfairness” by Angus MP Kirstene Hair who has demanded greater transparency.
It is, of course, also notable that rising costs are passed on to customers in remarkably short order, only to fall at a very sedate pace when those same costs decline.
One can quite forgive motorists for feeling they are being badly treated – avoidance of the most expensive pumps may be difficult but it is hard to think of a more effective way to register discontent.