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All you need to know about Irish fuel prices in the wake of US and Iran agreement

CEO of Fuels for Ireland, Kevin McPartlan told us when Irish consumers can expect to see a reduction in prices

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Petrol pump - everything you need to know

Oil prices have already begun to fall after US and Iranian officials announced that an agreement has been made to end the war.

Mediator Pakistan says the deal will be signed on Friday in Switzerland. US President Donald Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened and the US naval blockade of Iran will end.

In the wake of the announcement, Tnaiste Simon Harris said the Government will be considering whether temporary cuts on petrol and diesel should continue. The excise reductions were brought in following a surge in prices due to the war, and are due to expire at the end of July.

CEO of Fuels for Ireland Kevin McPartlan told us when Irish consumers can expect to see a reduction in prices:

1. Prices have already come down - "The market has already reacted, the wholesale prices for petrol went down about 5c over the weekend, so that is already impacting. If someone bought fuel last Thursday and bought again today, they will see that difference already."
2. Diesel is seeing a bigger decrease - "There is a slight anomaly with petrol this time of year to do with the fact that Americans have a driving season, they go on holidays and drive thousands of miles. In America practically every private car is petrol, so it makes a massive difference to the global petrol price. So it means that petrol has either come down very slightly or remained static while diesel has dropped quite a lot."
3. It will be the end of the year before prices are affected by the Strait reopening - "If a vessel is trapped in the Strait of Hormuz for the past however many weeks and it gets out on Friday that still takes 50 days to get to Europe. So what we are looking at is the end of the year before delivery cycles get back to almost normal."
4. And three to five years before destroyed oil refineries are repaired - "Somewhere between 3-5 per cent of the worlds refinery capacity has been knocked out in the war. The damage that was done there takes a very long time to fix, refineries are really complex operations. Industry sources are saying its going to take between three and five years to repair all the damage that was done to the oil infrastructure in the Middle East."
5. A return to the taxation seen before the Governments temporary measures could actually lead to more expensive petrol and diesel - "It could actually happen that if the Government in two weeks reinstates the full excise duty then we would be paying a good deal more than we were paying in February for fuel."
6. Its too soon to say exactly what Irish customers will be paying - "There are so many elements to it, it would be foolish to say how things are likely to go, but the Government has a long history of increasing the price of fuel."

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