UK NEWS

PUMP PRICES TO SOAR AS OIL HITS NEW HIGH

NEW HIGH: Oil price surges again

Saturday June 28,2008

By Louise Barnett, Consumer Editor

FEARS of further crippling petrol price rises were sparked last night after crude oil surged to a record high of $142 a barrel.

Unleaded and diesel both edged higher yesterday to an average 118.76p and 132.15p a litre respectively. Diesel smashed through the average £6 a gallon mark earlier this week.

Holidaymakers will be badly hit. AA president Edmund King said: “With the time it takes for higher oil costs to work their way through to the pump, it’s going to be a long, hot and costly

holiday season for UK motorists.

“The sooner the Government announces that it won’t go ahead with October’s 2p rise in fuel duty, the less likely it will be that they face a summer of discontent.”

Motorists are already paying 22 per cent more for unleaded and a massive 36 per cent extra for diesel than a year ago. This has ramped up the cost of filling an average 50-litre family car tank by £10.89 for petrol and £17.39 for diesel.

Brendan McLoughlin, of web comparison site Petrolprices.com, said unleaded will reach £1.50 a litre by September. “Crude oil is rising and it will get passed down the line,” he said yesterday.

Some filling stations are already charging 145.9p a litre for diesel and 130p a litre for unleaded. The Daily Express is crusading for the Government to cushion motorists from the

spiralling costs.

Chancellor Alistair Darling has said fuel duty will increase by 2p a litre from October, pushing prices still higher.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery reached $142.26 on New York commodity markets yesterday before settling back slightly. The record high caused flutters on the stock market, with the FTSE 100 dropping by nearly 3 per cent during the morning before recovering later in the day. Markets in Paris and Frankfurt also fell nearly one per cent yesterday morning. Crude is now nearly 50 per cent more expensive than it was at the start of the year. And experts fear it will rise higher still.

Ladbrokes has stopped taking bets on crude hitting the $150 mark. Spokesman Nick Weinberg said: “It’s now a question of when and not if, as far as we’re concerned.”

Oil production cartel Opec is predicting that prices will rise as high as $170 over the next few months.