Dear Editor,
Over my working life in providing radio communications for exploration companies, I was told by senior staff of a company whose name is more aligned to a sea mollusc shell, that the in-house formula for wholesale petrol costing was the base price per barrel in USD being converted to one-cent-per-dollar (again in USD terms) which lead in this to case a price of around USD68 cents per litre (or about AUD-96cents per litre at today’s 30th August 2018 price).
When you factor in the usual transport cost of 30,000lt single trailer from depot (SYD) to Canowindra over 320km at AUD1.25/km return (640km) it means a delivered price of about 96+37.5=133.5/lt.
Adding to that a retail margin of about 8% will lead to a pump price of about $1.44 per litre.
I do not know what the pump price in Canowindra is at present, but your readers could make their own assessment. No, I am not a major oil company apologist and I pay whatever the pump price in Perth is (varying between $1.28 and $1.52) but I have the advantage of shopping around for petrol originating in Singapore when our governments (of all persuasions) has allowed local refineries to shut down to leave us at the mercy of offshore supply economics.
Wake up Australia.
Robert Sherwood
Perth WA