Economy Minister, Davor Filipovic, announced on Monday new government-fixed prices of fuel which will be in use for the next two weeks. According to this, retail rice of petrol would be set at 13.02 kuna (€1.73) per liter, or 3.5 percent down from before, while the price of diesel would be 13.43 kuna (€1.79) per liter, or 3 percent up from the old price.

“Fuel prices on motorways and elsewhere will be the same,” state agency Hina said. Earlier, the government’s attempts to combat rising fuel prices by price-fixing did not apply to motorways,

According to Filipovic, who talked about the fuel price structure, the allowed retail margin will remain at 0.65 kuna per liter of petrol and diesel, as will excise tax of 0.80 kuna on petrol and 0.40 kuna on diesel.

As usual, the government ventured to remind the public what the price would be had it not intervened to fix prices.

“Without these government moves, the price of diesel would have been 15.70 kuna and the price of petrol 14.92 kuna,” Filipovic said.

“The government’s new prices are related to prices on the wholesale Mediterranean market,” he said, adding that “this morning, the price of diesel went down, while the price of petrol increased.”

Meanwhile, on the London market, the price of oil has been falling for three weeks now. Last week, price of crude oil dropped by 5.5 percent, to $101 per barrel.

“This largest week-on-week drop in oil prices in the last month is a consequence of increased interest rates set by global central banks, which they did in order to rein in high inflation. The move will also slow down the global economy, and thus decrease the demand for oil,” Hina explained.

Regarding Croatia’s underground gas storage facility at Okoli, Filipovic said that “last Friday it was 41 percent full, and it will be at 90 percent full by October.”

Filipovic said that Croatia’s total gas consumption is 2.9 billion cubic meters per year. The capacity of the Krk LNG terminal is 2.9 billion cubic metres, and that of the Okoli storage facility around 430 million.

“We have sufficient quantities to ensure secure gas supply for Croatia,” he said.