Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Fuel Prices: Discussion

Mr. Kevin McPartlan:

That broader point is really important because it was traditionally the case for a couple of decades that the price of diesel was on average maybe 10 cent lower per litre than the price of petrol. That has been reversed now. The reason for that is that, traditionally, decades ago, the refineries in Europe produced mainly petrol because that was our predominant fuel. When we in Europe moved more to diesel, we did not have sufficient refineries for that, so we were a net exporter of petrol and a net importer of diesel, and a lot of those imports came from Russia. Therefore, when we try to take Russia out of the equation, it puts a real squeeze on diesel in particular to the point that we had, as I mentioned, just one day's supply-----

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