{"id":500514,"date":"2026-06-29T04:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T04:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500514\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T04:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T04:08:16","slug":"petrol-price-drops-below-3-a-litre-in-new-zealand-as-ceasefire-steadies-oil-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500514\/","title":{"rendered":"Petrol price drops below $3 a litre in New Zealand as ceasefire steadies oil markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The average cost for 91 sat about $2.49 at the beginning of the war, before jumping 14 cents a litre to $2.64 between March 6-9.<\/p>\n

Three days later, petrol had increased a further 12 cents a litre to $2.76.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the space of eight days between March 19 and March 27, unleaded 91 soared 32 cents on average to $3.40.<\/p>\n

However, that same 32-cents-a-litre fall to get to $2.99 today has taken more than a month.<\/p>\n

Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold said it was reasonable to expect some further falls in petrol prices to go through in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s broadly lining up with the indicators we use for the refined fuel prices in Singapore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the target that we think that price for the 91 would be heading towards is still in that $2.80 to $2.90 range, maybe a bit closer to $2.90.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have to keep half an eye on the exchange rate though because that has fallen away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eckhold said the New Zealand-US exchange rate had fallen 6% from just about 60c on February 27 to 56.40c today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s quite significant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kiwi-US exchange rate could easily head down towards 55 cents and if that happens then that will significantly mitigate against petrol prices falls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eckhold added that not much oil has really started flowing out of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to see 100 to 125 ships a day transit the [Strait of Hormuz] … best day last week we got up to I think was 40. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s quite a lot of water to flow under the bridge there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said pre-war pricing for petrol was still \u201ca far way away\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we do need to see a decent period we\u2019ve you\u2019ve got shipping flows at least as high as they were pre-war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: Z Energy chief Lindis Jones on what happens to petrol prices now<\/a><\/p>\n

The Commerce Commission recently put fuel retailers on notice, saying it expected to see decreases in global costs passed through to prices at the pump \u201cin the same way the increases have been\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made this expectation clear to the fuel companies and will be continuing our weekly monitoring of prices so we can call out any behaviour that is cause for concern,\u201d commissioner Bryan Chapple said.<\/p>\n

The competition watchdog said it had been reasonable for businesses to adjust their prices in response to higher and more volatile global wholesale prices during the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we\u2019re seeing some stability in the region, we expect this will lead to lower imported fuel costs and we want to see that reflected in the prices consumers are paying,\u201d Chapple said.<\/p>\n

The commission also said fuel surcharges and fuel adjustment factors (Fafs) must reflect only the additional fuel costs a business is facing.<\/p>\n

The price of Brent crude \u2013 the international benchmark \u2013 sat around US$72 a barrel today, slightly above its pre-war price but well below the US$120 seen earlier in the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The average cost for 91 sat about $2.49 at the beginning of the war, before jumping 14 cents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25490,806,2177,13990,5432,138,3467,97110,28796,1888,80258,22772,78,16609,25907,220,3234,130,117,111,139,69,4156,22126,3333,238171,131,1529,2044,8238,80],"class_list":["post-500514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-25490","tag-as","tag-average","tag-below","tag-between","tag-business","tag-ceasefire","tag-dipped","tag-drops","tag-first","tag-fragile","tag-holds","tag-in","tag-iran","tag-litre","tag-markets","tag-months","tag-more","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oil","tag-petrol","tag-price","tag-steadies","tag-than","tag-three","tag-time","tag-under","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}