Here’s when the RAA says you should fill your car with petrol before predicted Easter price rise

Pump prices are finally dipping below $1.60 a litre again, but with the Easter long weekend coming you might get stung by another rise. Here’s when experts say to fill up.

The best time to fill your tanks with petrol before the coming Easter weekend is before Monday next week, a fuel expert has revealed.

Petrol around Adelaide, as of Thursday, could be found for as cheap as 153c a litre at Costco on Churchill Rd, with prices topping out at around 158c a litre for unleaded 91.

RAA fuel expert Mark Borlace predicted prices would rise after Monday next week, due to current pricing reaching the bottom of a terminal gate cycle.

“Normally what happens is the bottom of the cycle equates to terminal gate price,” he said.

“When they get down to a wholesale price, sometimes they go lower, but they’ll sit there for a couple of days, and then they’ll bounce back up.”

He said terminal gate price on Thursday was 155.3c/litre and the average retail price is about 157c/litre.

Mr Borlace said the RAA believed a few more days were left in the cycle.

But he said that cheaper prices could also continue, to boost other sections of major fuel chain’s networks, including groceries, coffee and car wash outlets.

Given a recent “free kick” fuel outlets have been given by the government, Mr Borlace said a “different marketing strategy” compared with traditional cyclic trends could be followed.

Within the past month, prices peaked at well above 220c/litre.

For a number of weeks, outlets across Adelaide offered a range of prices between 210c/litre and 215c/litre.

Recent price cuts to fuel come as a result of the federal budget fuel excise slash.

The current fuel excise – which charges motorists 44c a litre – was slashed in half for six months.

The 22c cut kicked in on Tuesday last week and provided relief to households being charged upwards of $2.20 a litre.

Mr Borlace dispelled a common myth and said historically, a correlation between school holidays, weekends, Easter and Christmas price hikes when analysing a decade’s worth of data could not be found.

“There was no consistent correlation with any of those,” Mr Borlace said.

“It just happens that sometimes the activity of the market coincides with some other calendar event.”