Sunshine Coast motorists paid about $9 more to fill their fuel tanks yesterday than their counterparts two hours north.
The price of unleaded petrol on the Coast was 186.9 cents a litre, according to the RACQ’s Fair Fuel Price app, 15.3 cents a litre dearer than Maryborough’s 171.6 cents a litre.
Earlier in the week, several Maryborough service stations were selling ULP around 158.9 cents a litre, while the Sunshine Coast’s cheapest was about 172.9 and many were selling at 197.9 to 199.9.
Coast motorists who feel like fuel burnt a hole in their budget last year are not wrong.
The RACQ says the Sunshine Coast recorded its highest ever yearly average for ULP of 189.8 cents a litre.
The RACQ links the Sunshine Coast’s petrol prices to fuel cycles that operate in south-east Queensland, while regional areas have more stable pricing determined by global oil prices and international events, as well as transport and competition.
RACQ fuel economist Dr Ian Jeffreys said the SEQ price cycle was believed to have originated in the 1970s, when fuel companies declared “cheap Tuesdays” to encourage sales on the slowest day of the week and put the prices back up on a Thursday, which was pay day for many.
“That morphed into the weekly cycle we had until around 2010, and in the last 14 or 15 years that’s extended to the five or six-week cycles that we have today,” he said.
Help keep independent and fair Sunshine Coast news coming by subscribing to our FREE daily news feed. All it requires is your email at the bottom of this article.
Dr Jeffreys said the fuel cycle had not spread outside of south-east Queensland except for Toowoomba, where it had developed over the past 10 years.
He said the RACQ was concerned that the price cycles had become longer and flatter, reducing the opportunity for motorists to pick up cheaper fuel and keeping the average high, even though prices did not reach the peaks of 2022 and 2023.
Dr Jeffreys said all south-east centres had record ULP averages in 2024: 194.5 cents per litre in Brisbane, 190.9 cents per litre on the Gold Coast and 192.6 cents per litre in Ipswich.
“The Sunshine Coast has fared slightly better than the other centres in south-east Queensland but it’s significantly higher than we would expect and significantly higher than we see for regional centres elsewhere in Australia,” he said.
“In Perth, the average was 181.9 and there’s no good reason why fuel in south-east Queensland should be 10 to 15 cents a litre more expensive than in Perth.”
Dr Jeffreys said data did not support a correlation between the school holidays and cyclical fuel price increases, but given a delay in the cycle that increased the price in mid-December, “it looks like fuel companies were deliberately manipulating the cycles going into the school holidays”.
The cheapest fuel in Queensland in 2024 was in Dalby, where the average price of unleaded was 175.6 cents a litre.
Dr Jeffreys said motorists travelling in or out of the south-east could benefit from buying their fuel in the regional areas they were heading from or to, pending the state of the SEQ fuel cycle.
“On average, you would be better off buying in Gympie than on the Sunshine Coast. That’s not allowing for the bottom of the cycle. At the bottom of the cycle, you would be able to buy cheaper fuel on the Sunshine Coast,” he said.
Dr Jeffrey advised motorists to check apps such as the RACQ’s Fuel and Deals and fill up where and when it was cheapest, topping up only as necessary when fuel was at its highest.
“It’s quite difficult to see whether that has had any impact on the fuel market but as an individual, if you look at the savings in fuel if you buy fuel on the cheap days and only top up on the more expensive days, that will save you money over the year.”
A BP spokesperson said the company aimed to be competitive with pricing, while its independent operators set their own retail pricing.
The spokesperson said most of the company’s fuel was imported and oil prices were affected by demand for oil, supply and inventory levels, and geo-political factors.
No comment has yet been received from another fuel company contacted by Sunshine Coast News.
