Caltex Australia : response to ACCC proceedings on fuel price data

20 August 2014

Caltex notes today's announcement by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that it will institute proceedings in the Federal Court against Informed Sources and subscribers to its Oil Price Watch (OPW) service, including Caltex, alleging the service substantially lessens competition in Melbourne petrol retailing in breach of the Competition and Consumer Act.

Caltex strongly rejects the allegation that the OPW service is in any way illegal. Caltex will defend the ACCC action.

The OPW data consists of pricing information that is otherwise publicly available to everyone on petrol price boards.

The retail petrol industry in Australia is highly competitive, being characterised by highly price sensitive consumers and very low retail margins. The ACCC's most recent analysis of the retail petrol industry found the average retail profit on petrol sales between 2002-03 and 2012-13 to be 1.03 cents per litre*.

Because of the competitive and price sensitive nature of petrol retailing, petrol retailers rely on price board information in order to remain price competitive. The OPW service simply makes it cheaper for subscribers to collect this data.

Caltex is one of several subscribers to the OPW service provided by Informed Sources, an independent statistics company that collates fuel pricing data that is publicly available. The service has been operating in Australia for over a quarter of a century.

A subset of the OPW data is used by auto clubs to inform members and the public about fuel prices. A subset of this data is also used by the ACCC, which until recently received customised reports from Informed Sources.

Caltex remains focused on providing competitive prices and high quality service to all its customers. We believe the continuation of cost efficient data collection such as OPW is in the best interests of motorists.

*Monitoring of the Australian Petroleum Industry - Report of the ACCC into the prices, costs and profits of unleaded petrol in Australia, December 2013, p.172