Pump action? UK motorists await report on painful petrol prices

theguardian.com:

Darren Briggs was queueing to pay at his local Shell garage in Pembrokeshire when his blood began to boil. An irate holidaymaker was accusing the retailer of ripping him off on the price of petrol, which was apparently 15p cheaper at a Tesco near home in Birmingham.

Briggs, who owns the petrol station operator Ascona, couldn’t help but step in. “I explained to him that there are varying time lags on the pricing of fuel depending on different retailers’ contracts. It was a lightbulb moment for him,” says Briggs.

The eye-watering prices at Britain’s pumps will come under scrutiny this week as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) delivers the results of a “short and focused” review into the market on Thursday.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced a 5p-a-litre cut in fuel duty in March’s spring statement but, with petrol and diesel at record highs, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, asked the CMA last month to investigate whether the cut had been passed on, amid accusations of profiteering. UK petrol prices are just above 191p a litre on average, with diesel at 199p.

Gordon Balmer of the Petrol Retailers Association says: “All retailers passed on the duty cut: however, wholesale costs increased and overwhelmed the cut. It takes several weeks to pass on – by the time old stocks deplete, wholesale prices continue to rise.”

In recent days, motoring groups have also accused retailers of failing to pass on easing wholesale costs.

Retailers argue they are only making a few pence a litre in profit, that oil refineries have increased their own margins, that moving away from Russian oil has created challenges, and that they have taken a hit from the weakened pound.

Briggs’s Ascona runs 62 petrol stations under the Texaco, Jet,