A growing list of fuel stations in Perth and regional Western Australia are running dry amid the war in the Middle East, with the State placed on \u201cyellow alert\u201d for the shortage.<\/p>\n
The global fuel crisis has seen WA elevated from a \u201cwhite alert\u201d to \u201cyellow alert\u201d in the past week, which is the second on a four-tier scale.<\/p>\n
A yellow alert deems that the State is under a \u201chigh risk for acute supply disruption\u201d and occurs when \u201csupply channels\u201d are \u201cmoderately compromised\u201d.<\/p>\n
It comes as 12 service stations reported they had run out of unleaded petrol on Wednesday and 14 stations said they were without diesel.<\/p>\n
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has insisted the Government is working to help the regions amid reports big suppliers are skipping independent outlets for their branded sites in Perth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Simon Leske who has been the owner and operator of Hills Emporio in Karragullen for seven years has been out of fuel for three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any end in sight yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to my supplier the other day and he said that he\u2019s been only given 15 per cent of his normal allocation, which he\u2019s trying to get out to the farms and the regions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said more needed to be done to stop the big four petrol distributors withholding fuel from independents and to get fuel to regional areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government needs to look after the little guys, like myself, too. Something it feels like they don\u2019t give a rats about small business. Every service station around me seems to have no problem with fuel and as I say, we\u2019ve run out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBut more importantly, look after farmers so they can get their seeding done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issues extend across the State, with Esperance, Geraldon, Mount Barker, Albany and Geographe on the list \u2014 with farming communities particularly worried about the upcoming cropping season.<\/p>\n
The crisis has become so bad truckies trying to drive goods to and from WA have been stranded at remote servos and reported fuel cost now as high as $10,000 per trip.<\/p>\n
Heavy haulage boss Robert Cook says he has been stranded twice one east-west run \u2014 once for a day and a half at Ceduna on the Nullarbor and then again near Keith on the SA-Victorian border.<\/p>\n
Mr Cook often carries critical equipment for the mining and agriculture sectors, with in excess of 100 tonnes.<\/p>\n
The Helco Group owner said the average fuel cost to travel from Melbourne to Perth has doubled from $5000 to $10,000 and has called for the excise to be scrapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in and around trucks for the last 20 years. It\u2019s very frustrating to see our country struggle like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard part is with the prices going up, I\u2019ve had to put a fuel excess surcharge on top of my principal quote and some people don\u2019t agree with that, which I understand because it\u2019s expensive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI charge 27 per cent extra on top, which quite frankly isn\u2019t enough with the way it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got four trucks on the road, one of them I drive myself. Unfortunately, I can lose jobs because of it. We\u2019re really feeling the pinch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Motor Trade Association of Western Australia boss Neil Le Febvre said some regional areas had seen four-times the demand since the war began.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big brands have contracts with their stations and then you have independents who don\u2019t have agreements so they typically rely on spot pricing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge here is the contract law and the fact that the big supplies are mandated to deliver to their branded outlets so it does leave those independents in predicaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cPanic buying has drained supply to a certain degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuel prices will continue to soar across WA on Thursday, with five brands set to record an increase in the metro.<\/p>\n
The average unleaded price per litre will be $2.5830 per litre in the metro area, while the State\u2019s maximum price will be in Port Hedland at $2.8480\/litre.<\/p>\n
The average diesel price is $3.0710\/litre across the city.<\/p>\n
The cheapest outlet in the metro will be Vibe stations, with the brand average down 4.3 cents to $2.4930\/litre.<\/p>\n
Caltex will be the most expensive brand at $2.6830\/litre.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A growing list of fuel stations in Perth and regional Western Australia are running dry amid the war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,44,16861,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-563934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-transport","13":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}