Petrol prices flat despite oil depot fires

12th December 2005

Prices for 4 star (LRP), unleaded and diesel all remained flat over the weekend
despite the huge fires which have been burning at the Buncefield oil depot in Hemel Hempstead.

Buncefield is the country’s fifth largest fuel distribution depot, jointly run by Total
and Texaco, and is used to store oil, petrol and kerosene. It had been feared that the
loss of the Buncefield depot may have caused some supply problems, but this has not
been the case.

According to fuel price monitoring website www.petrolprices.com, prices actually
fell marginally on Sunday, with the average price of Unleaded down 0.1p/litre to
87.60p and Diesel down 0.3p/litre to 91.99p

The news came as fire-fighters were given the go-ahead to attempt to extinguish the
blaze, which is believed to be one of the biggest in peacetime Europe.

Commenting on the announcement, Paul Maunders, co-founder of PetrolPrices.com said,
- The oil industry is incredibly resilient. They have plans in place to deal with supply
problems like this. The price statistics from www.petrolprices.com today would confirm
that their plans are working and that the disruption has been minimal.?

The advice from the industry is for motorists to buy petrol when they normally would
and not to panic buy. Nick Vandervell, from the UK Petroleum Industry Association said,
- “Since Buncefield only accounted for around 5% of total distribution capacity, it is
the act of panic buying itself which is most likely to cause shortages, and not
supply problems from the depots.”

Notes for Editors

Petrolprices.com is the UK’s only comprehensive and free fuel price website for
consumers, where they can find the cheapest petrol stations near any town or
postcode of their choice. Prices are updated daily and displayed conveniently
using Google Maps technology.

At the time of writing the difference between the highest price (104.9p) and the
lowest price (83.9p) for unleaded petrol in the UK was 21p.

Petrolprices.com was launched in November 2005 by Fubra Limited, the same company that
launched the largest UK house price website www.ourproperty.co.uk in January of the same year.

For more information contact:

Brendan McLoughlin
Managing Director

E:
W: www.PetrolPrices.com
P: 0844 816 0001
F: 0844 816 9999