{"id":604336,"date":"2026-09-18T13:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604336\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T13:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:50:12","slug":"petrol-hits-3-25-a-litre-as-aa-warns-prices-are-likely-to-stay-high-until-mid-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604336\/","title":{"rendered":"Petrol hits $3.25 a litre as AA warns prices are likely to stay high until mid-November"},"content":{"rendered":"

AA principal policy adviser Terry Collins said a raft of factors were now combining to push up the landed price of petrol in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

He said this included restricted supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, attacks on Saudi oil pipelines, soaring insurance costs for oil tankers and a lower Kiwi dollar.<\/p>\n

He said that meant there was likely to be a little more pain to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe probably won\u2019t get much relief before Christmas, unless something really major happens geopolitically,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n

Collins said one big factor, however, in terms of what oil prices did before Christmas, would be the US midterm elections on November 3.<\/p>\n

Should US President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s Republican Party lose control of the US House of Representatives and the Senate at the election, it could weaken the power of the White House.<\/p>\n

Collins believes Iran knows this and is doing all it can to restrict global oil supplies now because it wants to keep prices high for motorists in the US, in the hope that it would damage the Republican Party\u2019s chances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got no military might that they can attack the USA. But what they can do is make them pay through the ballot box by forcing up the price of diesel. It\u2019s at record prices in the US. It\u2019s never been this high per gallon,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n

Diesel in New Zealand is currently sitting at $2.96 a litre, still well short of the peak earlier this year of around $3.80 in April.<\/p>\n

Collins did not believe New Zealand would see a return to those sorts of levels, as much of that price spike was driven by the initial uncertainty and volatility around the war.<\/p>\n

However, he said there was a lot of global competition for diesel at the moment, and local prices were likely to rise further.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor diesel, and that\u2019s where globally everybody\u2019s competing, those prices are going to keep going up. That runs our trucks, our harvesting equipment and the rest of the world. There are also flow-on effects around fertiliser and a whole bunch of other impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to getting supplies of petrol into the country, Collins is confident New Zealand is not likely to face any major issues.<\/p>\n

He said the current issue was a price problem, not a supply one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve done is the Government and the industries have worked really effectively in putting in place a plan around storage. That includes additional diesel and increased tanks up in Channel Infrastructure up in Marsden Point. It means we have really accurate data on our shipping, and the ships coming in, and we are managing our load,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AA principal policy adviser Terry Collins said a raft of factors were now combining to push up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12467,37878,192,806,138,55800,40922,2959,4508,120,25907,17630,111,139,69,22126,12937,2069,61,698,8218],"class_list":["post-604336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-12467","tag-aa","tag-are","tag-as","tag-business","tag-corin","tag-dann","tag-high","tag-hits","tag-likely","tag-litre","tag-midnovember","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-petrol","tag-prices","tag-stay","tag-to","tag-until","tag-warns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604336","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=604336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}