Petrol to be $1.50 a Litre by mid-2011 (Cough)

Two or three months ago I read in the paper where the RACWA (Royal Automobile Club of WA) were warning motorists that petrol—or ‘gas’ for my American readers—would be $1.50 a litre ($6.80 a gallon for my American readers) by mid-2011. At the time petrol was hanging around the $1.20 per litre mark, so a hike to $1.50 was a 30c per litre increase.

Well they were wrong.

It is the 17th December 2010 and I just paid $1.537 for petrol—with mid-2011 still a full six months away!

Okay. It was Premium (octane 95) petrol which is 8 or 9 cents dearer than regular (octane 91). So that means regular was probably $1.457 a litre.

I guess what I am getting at here is that the RACWA forecast of petrol being $1.50 by mid-2011 is looking like a very safe bet—unless there is some huge fall in the price of crude oil in the first half of 2011. And the chances of that happening would have to be calculated as extremely unlikely.