Associate Energy Minister Paul Swain has launched a new web page within the MED website where people can compare international petrol and diesel price movements with changes in retail petrol prices in New Zealand.

The webpage (http://www.med.govt.nz/ers/oil_pet/prices/index.html ) is being maintained by the Ministry of Economic Development.

"I have taken up the issue of rising petrol prices and the impact it is having on consumers with the major petrol companies," Paul Swain said.

"As part of that process I asked MED to come up with a place where people could monitor for themselves what was happening with pricing here compared with price movements overseas," he said.

"By logging onto the web page people can see weekly averages of international petrol and diesel prices and make comparisons to prices at their local pump.

"One graph shows the weekly averages of Dubai crude oil prices and refined diesel and petrol prices for the period from January 1999 to the most recent week for which information is available.

"A second graph shows weekly averages of retail petrol price for regular unleaded petrol and the ex-refinery Singapore price for unleaded petrol. It will show how oil companies have responded to changes in the underlying cost of product.

"The Singapore spot petrol price series is based on 95 octane petrol, and although this is not the same grade of regular unleaded petrol sold in New Zealand (91 octane), it provides a close benchmark for monitoring price changes.

"Singapore is considered to be operating at industry best practice levels, and is widely used as a benchmark for pricing in the Asia-Pacific region.

"These will be good measures of how the industry is reacting to international conditions, and will let consumers see if they are getting value for money.

"I encourage people to use this web page so they can see for themselves whether local petrol prices fairly reflect what is happening overseas," Paul Swain said.

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