Tumbling oil prices are resulting in lower petrol costs, but there are warnings the good news for drivers may not last.
With prices falling by more than 40% since June's high of
$111 a barrel, there have been an increasing number of reports
suggesting petrol prices across the UK could soon fall below £1 per
litre - the lowest level since the end of May 2009.Experts at the RAC believe petrol could fall to 99p a litre next year, while economists at Goldman Sachs also believe petrol could fall close to £1.
But AA president Edmund King insists this possibility remains "remote".
He said: "A 6.6p-a-litre drop in the price of petrol releases a potential £3m-a-day switch of consumer spending from fuel forecourts to other businesses.
Mr King went on: "However, the parallels with the 2008 crash, albeit that was a market in freefall while this one has been engineered by OPEC and could be stopped any time, carry a warning from the ghost of Christmas past.
"In 2009, a new year brought a new assessment of the market and pump prices started to rise again on January 5."
But while the ONS said the price consumers pay at the pumps for petrol and diesel were "strongly related to the price of crude oil", it highlighted that price changes were "less volatile and the effect of changes in crude oil prices are delayed".
Ian Taylor, chief executive and president of Vitol, the world's largest oil trading company, told Sky News' Ian King Live that although the future was difficult to predict he believes the market "will steady up".
"We feel at the current prices and with Brent at $60 a barrel we should begin to see some stability, but oil has been a lot lower than this and a lot higher so it's difficult to predict just at this moment - but I do begin to believe the market will begin to steady up."
He added: "It's a pretty big tax cut for every single consumer in the world and it's a huge transfer of income from oil producers to world consumers. It's pretty positive for the UK, Europe and other big consuming countries around the globe."
The motoring group said that between mid-November and mid-December UK average petrol prices fell 6.6p to 116.32p a litre.
Only the October-November 2008 fall of 11.5p a litre and the August-September 2006 dip of 7.9p have been greater than the most recent decline.
And the fall does not include the very latest 2p-a-litre petrol reduction by the four biggest supermarkets which took effect on Wednesday.
Currently, south west England has the cheapest petrol, at an average of 116.1p a litre, while East Anglia has the dearest, at 117.1p.
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