A 15-minute drive could save Albion Park Rail motorists around $10 when they fill up their tank.
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As of Tuesday morning, there was a stunning disparity in petrol prices between Wollongong and Albion Park.
In the city, unleaded petrol could be had for 124.9 cents per litre.
But head 15 minutes down the highway and the very same petrol was going for as much as 142.3 cents per litre.
That’s a price gap of 17.4 cents per litre.
It was a similar story for E10, where the price disparity between Wollongong and Albion Park Rail was 16.4 cents per litre.
Northern suburbs motorists shouldn’t be laughing – the 10-minute drive from Wollongong to Corrimal sees a similar spike in petrol prices.
The phenomenon of rising petrol prices as you drive out of Wollongong is more noticeable in the wake of the government’s Fuelcheck website or NRMA petrol price app, that offer real-time data on prices.
There is an expectation that the region as a whole should start seeing prices at the petrol pump start dropping.
... prices will be falling - slowly but they should be falling.
- The NRMA's Peter Khoury
But it won’t happen overnight, said the NRMA’s Peter Khoury.
“In Sydney they’re dropping fairly slowly, they’ve dropped about three cents a litre and they should continue to drop over the following three weeks.
“We’re expecting the average in Sydney to get down to around a $1.18.
“Wollongong is in a different market but Wollongong tends to follow the Sydney trend, so prices will be falling - slowly but they should be falling.
“But it won’t hit the bottom of the cycle for some time yet.”
Mr Khoury said the predicted fall in petrol prices was due to an expectation oil production was about to increase.
And it seems Donald Trump could end up saving us money at the petrol bowser.
“The Americans have been increasing production and the new president is indicating he’s very keen to see shale production increase,” Mr Khoury said.
“They’re opening up new pipelines that had previously been held up. He’s very much talking about production, production, production.
While they don’t tend to export the oil they produce it will potentially have an impact on the world market.”
That’s because the US would then be importing less oil, bringing the price down.