By Rebecca McGirr
TERRY Hughes, owner of Circle K station, located on the southern side of the Ballyshannon/Belleek border has said the fuel crisis is ‘volatile’ and like ‘nothing he has seen before.’
The global fuel crisis due to Russian’s invasion of Ukraine has sent the world in to economic shock as fuel prices reach a record high.
Due to this crisis having a devastating impact on every day people struggling to cope with escalating prices, the Irish government announced a cut in excise duty on petrol and diesel last week. Petrol was reduced by 20 cents a litre and 15 cents a litre on diesel. The cut will be in place until the end of August.
Terry Hughes has noticed due to the cut in excise duty a significant rise in people from the North, particularly at the weekend filling up at his station.
He said, ‘Our prices are currently £1.59.9 per litre for diesel and £1.54.9 for unleaded so there’s a fair difference with some stations in Enniskillen which is sitting at £1.90 per litre. I’d say with prices decreasing we’ll definitely see an up come now from this week onwards, as Wednesday we are looking at possible further decreases in prices.’
However, Mr Hughes explained that quoting prices is nearly impossible as they can fluctuate on an hourly basis.
‘In 2008 we seen something similar, but nothing near this scale, we might have seen 5, 6 cent rise every week whereas now we’re seeing a rise of 10 cent in an hour, it is nearly impossible to judge or predict because all our normal market rules have disappeared, it’s just that volatile.’
Mr Hughes also explained that due to the location of his filling station on the border, fuel loads decrease at a much faster rate as many lorries would be filling up at his station.
He said, ‘As we are on the border a lot of lorries would be filling up here, therefore the loads that we’re getting in are gone so much quicker, so because the load sells quicker we’re going into the next load sooner and the problem has been for the past few months the prices have just been rising on a daily basis, its been relentless since the 1st January, the daily prices have just rose every day.’
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