I think this is the best description of the current petrol pricing system I have read. If you are not happy paying $1.20+ for petrol please have a read and pass it on to those who are also upset by the current price structure.

If you attempted to drive anywhere on our clogged roads this weekend and saw the number of cars burning fuel while going nowhere, you would have to think that someone is having a happy Easter. --Doug Steley Silver Image Photographics

This week leading up to Easter, Australians have had every right to wonder why they are being crucified at the petrol pump. Fuel prices have climbed to $1.34 a litre for regular fuel, perhaps more in some locations.

The detailed explanation for the current exorbitant fuel pricing lies partly in Federal Government taxation policy, but more significantly with global fuel companies and supermarket cartels, profiteering in a deregulated market.

The Australian Government abolished controls regulating the capping of wholesale fuel prices in 1998, opting for "import price parity", which, at the time, provided low fuel costs as the then market price was around $US20-30 a barrel. However, today, with the price of foreign oil reaching $US65 a barrel and home-produced Australian crude available for less than $US20 a barrel (Australia is 75 per cent self-sufficient in crude oil production), an obvious inequity in fuel pricing parity occurs.

Combine this with the systematic buy-out and elimination of smaller private petrol stations in the past two years, enabling the global fuel companies and supermarket cartels to gain a near monopoly of the market share, and the result is unrestricted profiteering, delivering billion-dollar profits at the expense of Australian motorists. So if you're paying $1.34 a litre this week for fuel, at least 51 cents is tax. The remaining 83 cents goes to the fuel company cartels. Fuel companies will argue that the market price of crude is high, but in reality this is a stock exchange price based on the Singapore market and New York Stock Exchange futures; it does not reflect the true cost of crude oil supply.

The price of crude oil from Bass Strait is a good example: in 2002 a barrel of crude retailed for $US20; its supply cost would have been significantly less. In 2006 that same oilfield retails crude oil for $US63 a barrel, even though its supply cost is less than $US20 a barrel. Exxon (Esso) owns 50 per cent of Bass Strait Oil. It also owns Mobil, which owns the Altona Refinery sourced by the Bass Strait pipeline. How much cheaper must it be to pump your own crude, from your own oil rigs, to your own refineries, for your own service stations, than having to ship it from overseas at foreign-market prices? It's an established fact that 50 per cent of Australian petrol is produced from Australian crude oil, at much reduced supply and production costs — yet these cost savings are never reflected in pump prices or passed on to consumers.

This unacceptable circumstance is best remedied by a change of government policy — or, alternatively, by a change of government.