Petrol soars to new all-time record price of 148p a litre as diesel passes previous high 

The price of petrol has hit a new record high, reaching 148.02p a litre on average today, as families across the UK continue to face the worsening cost of living crisis. 

This means it has surpassed the record price set on November 21 when drivers faced pump prices of an all-time high of 147.72p per litre on average.

Meanwhile, the cost of diesel has also surpassed the record price set on Friday and is now sitting at 151.57p per litre on average.

The previous record, before last Thursday, was 151.10p set on November 20. 

‘The cost of living crisis has been ratcheted up yet another notch, tightening the vice on family spending when it faces other pressures from impending domestic energy cost and tax increases,’ says Luke Bosdet, the AA’s fuel price spokesman.

The record prices come at a time when households across the UK are facing rising costs with energy bills and grocery bills also set to soar.

Many companies have already warned they will increase prices for consumers due to rising costs from raw materials, wages and energy bills.

Since the records were set in November, the fuel trade had allowed average pump prices to fall just 2p a litre to their lowest point of 145.53p on January 4, despite a much bigger slump in wholesale costs of as much as 10p a litre. 

Petrol retailers and supermarkets were accused of fleecing motorists and failing to pass on more of the wholesale savings at the pumps – with prices between stations differing by up to 8p a litre in some areas in January.

Since then, the price has steadily crept back up and motoring groups are warning drivers to expect record prices on a daily basis as tensions between Russia and Ukraine send oil prices soaring to a seven-year high. 

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said: ‘Petrol has unfortunately hit a frightening new high of 148.02p which takes filling a 55-litre family car to an eye-watering £81.41. 

‘With the oil price teetering on the brink of $100 a barrel and retailers keen to pass on the increase in wholesale fuel quickly, new records could now be set on a daily basis in the coming weeks.

‘The oil price is rising due to tensions between Russia – the world’s third biggest oil producer – and Ukraine, along with oil production remaining out of kilter with demand as the world emerges from the pandemic.

‘As a result drivers in the UK could be in for an even worse ride as pump prices look certain to go up even more.

‘On a positive note, retailer margins – which were the reason drivers paid overly high prices in December and January – have now returned to more normal levels of around 7p a litre.

‘We urge the big four supermarkets, which dominate fuel sales, to play fair with drivers and not to make a bad situation on the forecourt any worse by upping their margins again.’

It comes after oil giant BP posted its highest annual profit in eight years and announced more returns for shareholders while Shell boasted of ‘momentous’ £12billion profits.

Last week, BP revealed it swung to a mammoth £9.5 billion underlying replacement cost profit – its preferred measure – for 2021 from losses of £4.2 billion the previous year, notching up £3.01 billion of profits in the final three months alone – up from just £85.1 million a year earlier.

The company also announced more cash returns for shareholders, with another £1.1 billion of share buybacks before its first-quarter 2022 results and a dividend payout of 3.37p a share for the fourth quarter.

And London-based energy giant Shell has increased its profits nearly fourteen-fold to £12billion, it was revealed last week.

The company collected £6.55 ($8.88) for every thousand cubic feet of gas it sold to customers in the last quarter of 2021 – with gas previously selling for less than half this amount only six months earlier. 

BP had recovered from a torrid 2020, when the pandemic sent it slumping £13.4 billion into the red on a statutory basis – its biggest ever annual loss. 

But oil and gas prices have since rebounded as economies worldwide reopened following the early stages of the pandemic – and the results are now intensifying pressure on energy firms as they reap mammoth profit hauls while households and businesses struggle to pay energy bills amid soaring inflation.

A sharp rise in wholesale gas prices has led to energy regulator Ofgem raising the cap that limits what suppliers can charge consumers in England, Scotland and Wales by £693 to £1,971 a year from April – with a further hike expected in October.

Britons also face other demands on their income, including rising food, broadband and mobile phone costs as inflation rises to a 30-year high, with the Bank of England forecasting it will hit 7.25 per cent in April.

The figures meant calls for a windfall tax on energy giants intensified, with Labour MPs arguing that while households are paying through their teeth for gas – energy bills are set to spike more than 50 per cent in April – the companies which extract that gas are reporting massive profits.