The price of gasoline has skyrocketed. Diesel is through the roof. It has already been dropped that The Government has studied discounts on purchases of fuel as it already did in 2022. And while the Spanish are looking for the cheapest gas stations to refuel, service stations have just opened a war to continue attracting customers.
through the clouds. If we talk about average prices, we are still far from the figures that we end up paying for gasoline and diesel in 2022. In the days that followed the first stages of the Ukrainian War, gasoline came to reflect an average price in Spain of 2.152 euros/liter and diesel 2.106 euros/liter, according to the portal dieselgasolina.com which monitors the price of all service stations in the country.
Today, March 19, gasoline reflects an average price of 1,784 euros/liter on average. 98 gasoline already scales at 1,938 euros/liter. The basic diesel is already paid at 1,906 euros/liter and the “premium” at 1,988 euros/liter. With these data, gasoline is about 40 cents/liter of what was paid in 2022 but diesel is already at 20 cents/liter.
Not only that. If we look back we find a brutal increase in prices. On March 1, the average price of gasoline was 1.495 euros/liter. That is, in 19 days the average price has increased by almost 30 cents/liter. Diesel is even more worrying, rising almost 50 cents/liter from the 1,447 that it reflected on average on March 1.
A relief to the pocket. At least cosmetically. That is what happened in 2022 when the Government applied a fuel reduction of 20 cents/liter. It was a flat rate for all drivers which partially alleviated the effect of rising fuel prices, without taking into account if the client was doing it for recreational useto go to work or because he was a professional who needed it to provide his services.
However, prices continued to rise and just a few days after the aid began to be applied, which arrived when gasoline was 1.84 euros/liter, we were already paying the same than before the subsidy. Did the marketers take advantage to continue raising prices and increase their business? The CNMC suspected so.
Repsol tightens. Although rumors point to a possible subsidy again, oil companies have already begun to take positions in the face of a new price war. The most ambitious has been Repsol, which has in its Waylet program the best tool to build customer loyalty. The company has announced that double your discounts with Waylet. That is, now they deduct 10 cents/liter for each refueling.
But Repsol has turned Waylet into its own ecosystem from which it is difficult to get out. If you have electricity contracted with Repsol, the savings double and go from 10 cents/liter to 20 cents/liter. And if you have other contracted services, such as car or home insurance, the discount is 40 cents/liter.
Added to this are the discounts with every electric car recharge and domestic rates or subscriptions outside the home, which is why they have managed to position themselves as a very attractive option for those who have both technologies at home, combustion and electricity.
A price war. Repsol, yes, is the company that has the highest prices on the market, according to dieselgasolina.com. On average, gasoline at Repsol costs 1,763 euros/liter and diesel 1,861 euros/liter. Moeve, the second most expensive supplier, is very far away, with an average price of 1,693 euros/liter and 1,760 euros/liter for gasoline and diesel respectively. The gap with low cost is gigantic. Alcampo currently sells gasoline at 1,594 euros/liter and diesel at 1,706 euros/liter.
However, Repsol has a reason to push: low cost. They explain in Expansion that these service stations are more sensitive to price increases because the volume of each purchase is smaller. They do not have the storage capacity of large companies, which forces them to buy more often and, therefore, increasingly more expensive when the price skyrockets. This reduces your profit margins.
And although in the middle they assure that the low cost ones continue to be cheaper, the truth is that the margin is narrowing. When the difference is small, it is easier for Repsol to gain followers and build customer loyalty with large discounts since “cheap gasoline” loses much of its appeal. This loss of competitiveness translates into the results of dieselgasolina.com that collects that Ballenoil has, right now, gasoline more expensive than Moeve, just one step below Repsol.
under the magnifying glass. The aggressive discounts on gasoline have fueled the debate about the extent to which oil companies are taking advantage of the situation. In 2022, Repsol has already taken the opportunity to make aggressive discounts. Those, according to the CNMCthey took advantage to try to take smaller gas stations out of the market. Those days, low-cost service stations already assured that the Government subsidy was suffocating them due to the particularities of their business model.
Just a few days ago, The OCU has already filed a complaint with the CNMC that the increases that were occurring in the price of fuel were being abusive. They noted that according to the Official Gazette of the European Union, Spain was the third country in which prices had increased the most and that the cost of diesel was higher than the European average. As in the case of Expansion According to his calculations, the low cost ones were the ones that reflected the most striking increases.
It remains to be seen what the response of the rest of the service stations is. Repsol has already shown that it has room for maneuver. In 2022, the oil companies that entered the game did so in the same way, with wide discounts within their loyalty plans. And that has some clear losers: the low cost ones.
Photo | Juanedc
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