Watchdog demands drop in petrol prices.


The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is calling on oil companies to lower their petrol prices.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel says while international oil prices have dropped, Australian petrol prices remain high.
Mr Samuel says he has given the oil companies a week to lower their prices.
"I think what we can do is ask hard questions of them and expose some of the answers out into the public arena," he said.
Mr Samuel says while pressure can be applied, he does not have the power to regulate oil prices.
"But I think the last thing that any state or federal government would want to do is to start regulating petrol prices," he said.
"That would inevitably mean that consumers would start paying more for their petrol than they currently pay."
Mr Samuel says he thinks motorists have been paying up to 10 cents too much per litre with current prices.
Benchmark
He says the international benchmark set by Singapore crude oil is going down but Australian prices are remaining high.
"The correlation's not occurring at the present time," he said.
"We've seen a significant drop in the Singapore price; we're not seeing a similar drop occur in Australia.
"We'd expect that to be correcting itself over the next few days.
"If it's not, we've got some pretty hard questions to be asking of the oil companies."
Mr Samuel says international prices out of Singapore have dropped, and when that happens prices normally fall in Australia within 10 days.
"[The oil companies] claim consistently, and indeed over the past 24 hours have been claiming, that their prices in Australia are set in accordance with the international benchmark of Singapore," he said.
"If that's the case then they ought to be setting their prices in accordance with that benchmark and not letting the benchmark run away from them."
New South Wales Transport Minister John Watkins has welcomed the call for lower petrol prices, but says it has taken a long time for the ACCC to react.
"[Mr Samuel is] now saying he's going to take some action - well I welcome that, but we'll be keeping them honest on this," he said.
"If next week he hasn't taken action against the major oil companies for ripping off hard-working families, well the ACCC will really be subject to a lot of questions by the communities of Australia."
Motorists 'ripped off'
NRMA president Alan Evans has welcomed the ACCC's move, saying motorists have been paying high prices for petrol for too long.
"We believe that it's quite a clear message from Graeme Samuel, the head of the ACCC, that oil companies' days of ripping motorists off might be numbered," he said.
"We've been campaigning for two years to get the ACCC to take action - we welcome this intervention by Graeme Samuel.
"Motorists have been ripped off by the oil companies quite substantially over the last couple of years and it's about time they were called to account."
RACQ spokesman Gary Fites says Queensland drivers should be expecting to pay under $1 per litre for petrol this week.
"I think it's a sad reflection on what's happening at the moment that we are paying more for petrol now in Brisbane then we were a month before Christmas when oil prices were higher than they are now," he said.
Mr Fites says there is no doubt something fishy is going on among the oil companies.
"One would hope and trust that they won't get away with it so easily with the ACCC and particularly if the Federal Government backs their agency in this regard politically to bring the oil companies to account," he said.
"We want them to start moving and start pitching those petrol prices at a fair and reasonable level."