Why petrol is costing more at the pump

Petrol price cycles in Australia are highly volatile at the best of times, but Vivek Dhar, mining and energy economist at Commonwealth Bank, said there were two main reasons why petrol prices across the country have surged in the past week.

"One has been a tightening of oil markets, and that's driven by one resilient demand, as well as OPEC+ supply cuts, which is a group of countries that control about 40 per cent of global supply," he said.

"That has, for us, been instrumental in driving oil prices higher and tightening oil markets.

"The second factor has been a fall in the Australian dollar ... and as the Australian dollar falls, it makes it more expensive to buy petrol."

Also this seems important:

Those wholesale price movements make up around 85 per cent of what motorists pay at the pump .... while the remaining 15 per cent is from retail price movement.