Crude oil prices reach record high
Effect now being felt at the pumps, says AA
Crude oil prices reached a record high of $54 a barrel this week, driving the price of a litre of Shell Optimax and its BP equivalent to over 90p in some garages. Prices went up by over 1p this week alone.
The AA said the cost of a litre of unleaded petrol was now averaging 83.46p after hovering around 82p for over a month. The AA reckoned that the increase in oil prices was now starting to feed through into pump prices, adding that they would be "very surprised" if prices fell below 80p per litre any time soon. Average petrol prices were just under 79p per litre in April.
Factors in this phenomenon include simmering unrest in Iraq, Hurricane Ivan which hit supplies in the US, and political uncertainty in the US. Some have suggested that the Saudis could rescue the situation by increasing supplies but the world's biggest oil producers said that supply shortage was not the cause of the price rises, so action on their part was likely to have little effect.
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