Given today’s date, I’m tempted to head this report: “Petrol companies give away free fuel.”

Well, not quite, but I can report things around here have changed dramatically.

Really dramatically - and it’s only fair to acknowledge when things go right for a change.

Last week we deduced, as best one can, given the confusing accounts on the Australian Institute of Petroleum website, what mark-ups to petrol might be appropriate in the Eurobodalla.

We saw that, over the past six months, we were exceeding those mark-ups by an average of 75 per cent. Not good.  

However, now we have some sort of figure, we can compare the history of mark-up against it.

What a tale that tells.

On the graph on this page, the dotted green line is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) anticipated mark-up, 12.7 cents over the terminal-gate price.

In blue, we have the real mark-ups in Batemans Bay, with Moruya mark-ups in red.  

We pick up the story on October 5, 2014, with Bay mark-ups twice the expected level.

They rise steadily and inexorably over three months to a spectacular three times too high, on December 21.

That’s right, three times higher than the ACCC thinks reasonable!

Suddenly they crash, thrash around a bit, and finally level out exhausted, well under the ACCC projected level.

And stay at or below that level for eight weeks in a row. Unheard of!

Moruya never quite manages that same level of flamboyance, but it too has settled down at around the same level, for an unprecedented seven weeks in a row.  

Bay motorists used to see Moruya as an ideal to be envied, but last week’s graph and this week’s graph show both have been overpriced.

Moruya looked good only because Bateman’s Bay was outrageous.

The Hairy Eye will look more sympathetically your way in future, Moruya.

In the meantime, shush!  Petrol price mark-ups are sleeping …

Related coverage: Hairy eye on fuel prices