Fuel costs in Galway: paying the price for lack of competition

The AA has described as “remarkable” the fact that more than half of Galway City’s filling stations are charging the exact same price for diesel.

An extensive survey undertaken by the Galway City Tribune this week found a total of 11 stations are charging 129.9c per litre of diesel.

We found that motorists can save up to €3.60 on a fill of petrol and €2.40 on a tank of diesel by shopping around.

On Wednesday, this newspaper visited the forecourts of all 21 filling stations in the city, and found a difference of 6c per litre in petrol between the cheapest and dearest stations and 4c per litre for petrol.

The survey clearly identifies the three most expensive filling stations in the city – Ballindooley Fuels on the Headford Road, Arch Motors in the Westside and Kelleher’s in Salthill – while are each charging 138.9c per litre of petrol and 129.9c for diesel.

However, a total of 11 filling stations were charging 129.9c for diesel, which is almost exactly the national average price of 129.3c.

Conor Faughnan, Director of Consumer Affairs with AA Ireland told the Galway City Tribune that our figures make for interesting reading.

“The prices are very clustered for diesel. It is remarkable. Prices do fluctuate and there can be benign reasons for prices being matched, like someone pricing aggressively and their neighbours matching that price.

“For busier stations, it could be down to them having the same delivery cycle – a busy station would get through 40,000 to 50,000 litres per week, so price fluctuations there would be matched at the pumps.

“Why are prices so tightly clustered in Galway? I don’t know the answer,” said Mr Faughnan.

He warned that with the euro being so weak against the dollar at the moment, prices are only going upwards.

The cheapest filling station in the city at the moment is charging 132.9c for petrol and 125.9c for diesel.

For more on this story, and the league tables of all 21 filling stations, see this week’s Galway City Tribune