Annual Report of Market Transparency Unit for Fuels

Today the Bundeskartellamt published its latest annual report on the work of the Market Transparency Unit for Fuels.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "It pays to use a petrol station app and monitor price developments. Motorists can save a lot of money if they fill up at a cheap time at a cheap petrol station. Late evening still tends to be the cheapest time. Recently this was between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. However, there are also other times during the day when it is cheap to refuel. We also found out that on average a relatively cheap petrol station usually remains cheap just as a relatively expensive one is likely to remain expensive. Especially in holiday periods one should also be aware that motorway petrol stations are on average 15 cents per litre more expensive than other petrol stations."

Key findings of the 2017 Annual Report:

• There are still significant price differences in the course of a day. There can be differences of up to 30 cents/litre between the average highest and lowest fuel price within one town. In a sample of particularly rural districts, the authority found that price differences were in some cases still 15 to 25 cents/litre.

  Differences of around 10 cents/litre can be seen between the average highest and lowest fuel price at one petrol station. This generally applies to the towns as well as rural districts surveyed, whereby essentially the price ranges observed in the towns were somewhat larger.

• In the period from mid-January to mid-February 2018 it was found that prices were raised on average at four different times in the course of 24 hours, i.e. in the early morning (from approx. 5:00 a.m.), noon (from approx. 12:00 a.m.), in the afternoon (from approx. 5 p.m.) and late evening (from approx. 10 p.m.). Between these increases prices always drop again until the next increase.
• In contrast to previous years, no particularly high prices were observed during the night in early 2018.
• Prices still tend to be cheapest later in the evening.
• During the observation period prices at motorway petrol stations were not surprisingly considerably higher than those at other petrol stations. On a nationwide average, motorway petrol stations were around 15 cents/litre more expensive than other petrol stations.
• The price difference between the fuel categories E5 and E10 amounted to around two cents/litre. However, some brands showed larger price differences between these two categories.
• The relative price position of the different petrol stations compared to each other is quite stable. "Cheap" petrol stations mostly remained cheap during the observation period. "Expensive" petrol stations mostly stayed expensive.
• In the observation period the development of fuel prices essentially followed that of the crude oil price.
• Finally, as in previous years, fuel prices were not noticeably increased in 2017 around Easter and Whitsuntide.

In its report the Bundeskartellamt primarily evaluated fuel prices (E5, E10 and diesel) throughout Germany for the period from 1 June 2017 to 30 November 2017. For some analyses the whole year covering the period from 1 December 2016 to 30 November 2017 was taken as a basis. In view of current developments, price data from the beginning of 2018 was also used.

The report provides more detailed price analyses for the cities of Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart and for eight rural districts selected for the report. The urban-rural relationship will also be further examined in future for aspects which might be of interest to consumers.

The Market Transparency Unit for Fuels commenced its regular operation on 1 December 2013. It collects price data from approx.14,750 petrol stations in Germany.

The Market Transparency Unit does not itself offer realtime price information to interested citizens but forwards information on notified price changes to consumer information services in a very short space of time. Motorists can call up the information from a number of information service providers, both online and via mobile apps.

The Annual Report (in German) is available on the Bundeskartellamt's website.