But if one assumes that fuel prices will remain roughly the same for the rest of the year, average prices will emerge at the end of the year that will almost pulverize the old records. With E10 there would be an annual average of around 1.88 euros – around 29 cents above the old record. In the case of diesel, the value would be around 1.98 euros per liter – that’s a whole 50 cents more than the previous record.
Quick relaxation is not necessarily in sight. “There is a risk that the high prices will become entrenched in the market for a long time,” says Laberer. In order to prevent this, consumers would have to use their market power and consciously refuel cheaply in order to boost competition.
However, Laberer gives motorists a little bit of hope: “At the moment we are still a long way from normalization, but recently the competition seemed to be picking up again, at least for petrol, so that prices are no longer so clearly decoupled from the oil price as in the past months since the beginning of the Ukraine war. But there is still a lot of room for improvement,” he says. And with diesel, the situation is “much tougher”. Special effects also contribute to this, as Laberer explains: “The industry is replacing gas with diesel and currently the demand for the very similar heating oil is picking up again. But that doesn’t justify how excessive the current prices are.”