This Easter, filling the tank will cost practically the same as in 2022, when the price of fuel skyrocketed due to the start of the war in Ukraine. In this way, despite the fact that the cost of fuel accumulates several falls since the beginning of 2023, This year’s prices will be among the highest in history at Easter.
According to data from the European Union (EU) Oil Bulletin corresponding to the week of April 5 to 11, 2022 (last year Easter started on Sunday April 10), gasoline was sold in Spain at an average of 1.79 euros per liter, while diesel cost 1.813 euros, prices that were reduced to 1.59 euros and 1.613 euros thanks to the bonus of 20 cents. If these prices are compared with the latest data from the Bulletin, corresponding to the period between March 21 and 27, a week before the start of Holy Week, Spaniards pay a liter of gasoline at 1,627 euros and diesel at 1,545 euro. While waiting to know the prices registered from March 28 to April 4, the main difference with Easter 2022 is that filling the tank of a diesel vehicle will be cheaper than refueling with a gasoline car, just the opposite of what happened last yearalthough all drivers can get additional savings by going to “low cost” gas stations.
Specific, the average price difference between automatic or low-cost gas stations and traditional ones stands at 15 cents per liter of fuel for this Holy Week, According to the National Association of Automatic Service Stations (Aesae), after analyzing the prices published on the Gas Station Geoportal of the Ministry for Energy Transition,
The large oil companies in the country have proceeded with the arrival of the month of April, and at the gates of Easter, to a withdrawal in their offer of fuel prices that they had been applying in recent months of a discount of about 10 cents per liter , which they maintained despite the fact that the government subsidy of 20 cents per liter of fuel ended at the end of 2022.
Specifically, the employers’ association of “low cost” gas stations estimates that the difference in prices in the different communities ranges between 10 cents and 18 cents per liter in 95 gasoline and diesel, also exceeding for the first time the 10 cent difference in all the autonomous communities.
By autonomous communities, Navarra is where consumers who use 95 gasoline can save the most when choosing the station, since the average difference is 19 cents between automatic and traditional gas stations. While, in the Basque Country there is the greatest difference in diesel with 18 cents.
The president of Aesae, Manuel Jiménez Perona, stressed that “you can see a direct relationship between the implementation of automatic gas stations and the price differential in the different communities.” “In the case of Navarra and the Basque Country, where the presence of this type of stations is among the lowest, we found that the price difference is very high, due to the lack of competition from traditional stations,” he added.
For their part, the autonomous communities with the lowest difference in gasoline prices 95 are Murcia (10 cents), Islas Baleares (11 cents) and Castilla La Mancha, Asturias, Castilla y León and La Rioja (13 cents). Regarding diesel, Catalonia (10 cents), the Balearic Islands (11 cents), Murcia, Aragon and Asturias (12 cents) are the ones that offer the least difference.
Savings of 20 cents per vehicle
According to Aesae’s calculations, this can mean a saving of about 20 euros per vehicle during this week, which means a total saving of about 320 million euros, adding the savings generated by the 16 million trips that the DGT foresees these days. .