HSD: When did PULP95 petrol get 17c more expensive that ULP?

I guess I sort of knew something was going on. It was costing more to fill my car with petrol (that's 'gas' for my American readers). But I sort of dismissed it as the cost of petrol gradually creeping up—which is has been.

Then the other day I took notice and I was stunned to work out that premium unleaded petrol (PULP), which is 95 RON in Australia, was now 17 cents per litre more expensive than normal unleaded petrol (91 RON).

Holy Snapping Duckshit! 17 cents dearer for PULP—with your average 50 litre fill up that adds $8.50 to your gas bill on each fill. Based on the average of 1.5 fills per week that comes up to around $650 per year extra.

Long time readers may just remember that I did a post some time ago when I notices that PULP had gone up from 10 cents to being 12 cents more expensive than ULP. You can find that post here. That was July 2012.

And before that I had done a post about the difference going from 6 to 8 to 10 cents. That post is here.

So the additional cost per litre that we pay for 95 RON PULP has gone from 6 cents to 17 cents in the space of about six years. Almost tripled.

Anyone want to have a bet on what the difference will be by Xmas? I will be surprised if it is not very close to 20 cents. A nice even $10.00 extra per average fill.

Lately the Australian government has been considering the idea of cutting out 91 RON ULP because apparently it's 'dirty'. Well, dirtier than PULP anyway. It seems that cutting out ULP would be so good for the environment; and maybe it would too. I have no idea how much dirtier 91 RON than 95 RON when burnt in a car's engine.

But my thinking here is the that gasoline companies want to get that difference up as high as possible before that happens so they can make a very nice little premium from their premium petrol.