UK daily average fuel prices

[mikepepler]

The AA fuel price report is often quoted in the media, and you've probably already seen it: http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fuel/index.html

What's changed there this week is that they are also now putting the daily average fuel price up there too. Might be good for those of us with an unhealthy interest in seeing the crash happening in slow-motion.

Average prices today are 98.1p for petrol, 99.5 for diesel, both of which I think are records? They're also up 0.1p each on yesterday.

[clv101]

That's interesting. Are those daily figures available to download or only for the current day?

Also, the government has quietly announced that they will not be implementing the inflation-only increase in fuel duty (1.25ppl) on 1 September 2006. Fuel duty has been stuck at 47.1 pence since Oct 2003 with the annual planned increases being postponed each time since then. Freezing duty like this in the face of inflation is a tax cut in all but name which is exactly the wrong response to rising fuel prices.

[mikepepler]

That's interesting. Are those daily figures available to download or only for the current day?

Curent day only, monthly reports can be downloaded. If I can remember, I'm going to keep a note of the daily prices, then plot a graph relative to crude prices.

[clv101]

That would be great, I've written some notes here: http://uk.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/21/181358/014

[mikepepler]

OK, here's a graph of the historical data, which is only monthly. I've plotted diesel and petrol prices against the cost of oil in ? sterling per barrel. I've used two Y axes to accentuate the ups and downs, so we can see what's going on. My first observation is that there seems to be a month lag between changes in crude prices and fuel prices. Once I have enough daily data to plot a graph, this should show more interesting results, but I'll need to wait a few weeks.