Our draft report identifies several factors that we believe are affecting competition in New Zealand’s retail fuel market, which may mean consumers are currently paying higher pump prices than they could be. Our current view is that the fuel market is not as competitive as it could be. Our reasons include:

  • many fuel companies are highly profitable
  • regional differences in retail fuel prices reflect variations in competition levels
  • discounting does not provide a substitute for competition on board prices
  • premium petrol margins have grown faster than regular petrol.

For more information on our draft findings see our media release, the executive summary and the draft report.

We are interested in your thoughts on the issues above as well as on any of the remaining content of the report.

Comments are due by 4pm Friday 13 September and can be provided either by completing the online submission or emailing us. Details for both options are below.

Online submissions

We welcome your views through our online submission form. You can comment on our specific questions or provide more general comments.

Let us know your thoughts

Written submissions

We also welcome written submissions by email to Marketstudies.submissions@comcom.govt.nz

If you choose to email your comments to us, please indicate whether you are happy for your name to be published with your comments on the Commission’s website, or if you would prefer for your comments to be published anonymously.

If you would like to include any other confidential information in your comments, please be aware that we are subject to the Official Information Act 1982. This means that we cannot guarantee that we will be able to comply with all requests for information to be treated as confidential. If you would like to make any confidential comments, please email us at the address above to find out more about how we deal with confidential information.

Please see Attachment A of our report for further information on providing written comments.