Key Points
- Jim Chalmers says retailers should not use conflict to "gouge" customers.
- Energy Minister Chris Bowen has warned Australian consumers against "panic buying".
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has written to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to monitor petrol price gouging, warning service stations against "opportunistic" increases as the war in the Middle East threatens to drive up global oil prices.
The US-Israeli war with Iran has sent oil prices surging for a third consecutive day, with the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping lane on Iran's southern border through which about 20 per cent of the world's oil and gas is shipped — effectively closed.
Iran has threatened to fire on any ship trying to pass the key waterway, according to Iranian media reports.
On Tuesday, Chalmers sent a letter to ACCC executive director seeking his agency's assistance, writing: "Unfolding events should not be used as an excuse for retailers to gouge customers or to increase prices opportunistically above and beyond the impacts of events in the Middle East."
Energy Minister Chris Bowen, meanwhile, met with oil refining companies on Tuesday and said they had assured him oil would continue to be delivered until at least May.
Bowen said Australia had a "good stock of petrol in reserve", and there was no immediate threat to petrol supplies in the country.
He advised consumers that there was no need for "panic buying" and that doing so would only "make things get worse".
"There's no need to rush to the service station and fill up," he said while speaking to reporters in Canberra.
Bowen said the refining companies told him they had no plans to increase the price of petrol until the price of oil increase flowed through to Australia.
"There will be impacts from this crisis on petrol prices, but we don't want to see anybody profiteering unnecessarily or unjustifiably from this very difficult circumstance. I have great confidence that the refineries won't be doing that."
Some retailers in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are selling E10 petrol for well over $2 a litre, with diesel prices even higher in some areas.
But economists said the high costs were driven by the regular price cycle, with further cost increases from the Middle East war yet to hit Australian commuters.
— With additional reporting by the Australian Associated Press.
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