Two companies have announced increases in petrol prices.
From the end of this week petrol and diesel at Shell and Statoil garages, owned by Topaz Energy, will rise by an average of five cent per litre. This will bring the average price per litre up to €1.20.
Topaz is also introducing an increase of between €40 and €60 per fill of home heating oil. This will bring the average cost of a fill up to between €700 and €750 depending on the distributor.
Maxol has announced it too is increasing fuel prices - adding 2.68 cent per litre to petrol, 3.23 cent per litre to diesel and an average of 2.31 cent per litre of home heating oil. The company said the rise was necessary given the 'extremely strong rise in prices' and the fact that larger rivals were increasing prices.
The chief executive of Topaz, Danny Murray, said the decision to hike prices became unavoidable in the face of a 40% increase in crude oil prices since mid-August.
He said customers had been shielded from the effects of higher oil prices by the weakening US dollar. Mr Murray said motorists would be paying between six and 7.5 cent more for a litre of unleaded petrol if the dollar had remained unchanged over the past few months.
He said a further factor in the price rise was an increase to one cent on every litre in the Government fuel levy from November 1.
