Petrol Prices to top £1

Petrol Prices in the UK could soon top £1 a litre if the price of oil keeps on rising. Whatprice.co.uk have looked at the correlation between oil prices and the petrol forecourts and the results show a clear pattern emerging.

Alastair Taylor, Founder of Whatprice says “Basically if oil prices rise by around 7-8 dollars per barrel and stay there we can expect to see petrol prices rise by 5p or more. This could easily take the average forecourt price through the £1 mark”

Oil prices have been on the up due to the recent market turmoil and geo-political concerns and even temporarily passed the $80 mark in trading on Friday 14th September.

“Petrol Prices do not track the daily fluctuations of oil, but if we do see oil prices settle above the $80 mark then this will probably filter through to the price of petrol in a few weeks time”, say Jonathan Pearson, Director of Whatprice.co.uk.

The last time oil was this high was around September 2006, at that time oil was averaging around $75 a barrel, and the average price of petrol reached 98p, with many forecourts around the country reaching well over the £1.

There have been reports of petrol exceeding 100p in many parts of the country, indeed the more inaccessible areas of Wales and Scotland have suffered with prices above the pound mark for quite some time, and the average price of fuel in the Scottish Isles now stands at 102p.

Extrapolating the analysis further, if oil goes above $90 we could even start to see petrol costing over £5 a gallon.

Looks like we’ll have to start getting used to an extra digit on those forecourt pricing boards!


For more details see the full analysis at Petrol vs Oil Prices (http://www.whatprice.co.uk/petrol-prices/petrol-oil.html)

But we still prefer the car…

Despite the recent rises in petrol prices we British public is still in love with their car. A recent survey by whatprice.co.uk shows that over 70% of us still drive to work on a daily basis, just over 7% take the bus and only 6% the train.There is slighty better news for the NHS service, with a suprisingly large number of people chosing to either walk or cycle to work (nearly 14%), therefore getting some exercise as well as cutting their carbon footprints. However this percentage will probably start to dwindle as we approach the winter months.


See our Travel to Work poll for more details (http://www.whatprice.co.uk/environmental/travel-work.html.html) survey results are based on 576 responses to our online poll.