Here’s Where Malta’s Fuel Prices Stand Compared To Other EU Countries
Malta has found itself in the middle of the pack when it comes to the price of petrol, a graph by data journalist Martin Armstrong shows.
With a cost of €65.50 for 50 litres of super 95 petrol, the island comes ahead of the UK, where a full tank is 27 cents more expensive, and trails behind Belgium, where the same 50 litres would cost 33 cents less.
Prices at the pump have remained relatively stagnant over time in Malta, despite a sharp dip in the price of oil. The graph below shows the prices of petrol and diesel per litre in Malta, plotted on the left axis, compared with the price of Brent Crude oil in barrels on the right axis.
That being said, the evidence for correlation among oil costs and fuel prices tends to be weak, mainly because crude oil is the raw material. The price at the pump encompasses not only this cost, but the additional refining needed to turn oil into petrol or diesel and the subsequent transporting – a costly enterprise for an island like Malta, who with no land connections or pipelines has to rely solely on ships.
However, in a recent opinion piece on the Times of Malta, Alfred Farrugia, the president of the Malta Automobile Club, said that the price Enemed sells petrol, net of taxes and duties is the highest in the entirety of the EU. Oddly enough, Enemed is slightly more competitive when it comes to selling diesel, and this is because, Mr. Farrugia suggests, the fact that there are two other private importers of diesel.
In 2015, 95 million litres of petrol and 120 million litres of diesel were sold in Malta. That works out to around 220 litres of petrol and 277 litres of diesel per person. The total 215 million litres of diesel and petrol could fill 86 Olympic sized swimming pools.