Germany's SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag wants to restructure the country's mineral oil market and is also considering breaking up companies that hold substantial market power. "There are clear indications that the mineral oil market in Germany is not functioning properly," reads a draft resolution prepared for the SPD's ongoing policy retreat, which AFP obtained on Thursday. "We will therefore adopt further amendments to competition law in the coming weeks that increase price transparency and give the Federal Cartel Office additional means to bring order to the market."
Fuel prices, which have risen sharply since the start of the war in Iran, are placing an "enormous" burden on people, particularly in rural regions, the draft continues. It is "unacceptable that mineral oil producers in particular are cashing in against the backdrop of this crisis," the document states. Prices are "raised early and lowered slowly."
In the draft, the parliamentary group now demands: "The fuel market must finally be organised in the interests of customers. The option of breaking up oligopoly-like structures in the context of antitrust proceedings must also be put on the table." According to sources within the parliamentary group, the paper is due to be adopted on Friday.
The document also shows that SPD politicians in the Bundestag are pursuing a cap on fuel prices: "If the market does not function, then the state must intervene, for example by limiting profit margins through a fuel price cap, as in Luxembourg," it says. The SPD parliamentary group will "campaign for this in the further legislative process."
The war against Iran launched by the United States and Israel, and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic, sent oil prices, and subsequently fuel prices, soaring. According to the ADAC automobile club, the price of petrol reached a new all-time high on Wednesday. A litre of Super E10 cost an average of 2.215 euros nationwide, surpassing the previous record set in March 2022.
The automobile club points out that this is a nominal price record. Adjusted for general inflation, petrol has been more expensive in the past, for instance in 2012. Even so, the ADAC considers the current price of petrol too high, "because the oil price is well below the peak levels of the spring."
The mineral oil sector is pushing back against the accusations. The industry association Fuels and Energy notes that prices at filling stations do not depend directly on the price of crude oil, "but on international product prices for petrol and diesel." Those product prices, it says, have risen considerably more steeply than the oil price in recent months. "The reason is the war-related refinery outages in Russia and the Middle East," the association explained.
The ADAC counters that these conditions still do not justify "the scale of the price increase, particularly since April." "We have seen significantly lower fuel prices in the past at a comparable oil price and euro-dollar exchange rate."
Oil prices, meanwhile, rose on Thursday in the wake of renewed Iranian attacks on US military bases in the Gulf region. By midday, the price of a barrel (159 litres) of North Sea Brent had climbed 1.5 percent to around 97 dollars. The US benchmark WTI rose 1.8 percent to 92.60 dollars.
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