Fuel prices in the South East remain stable while experts determine if the ongoing conflict in Israel will impact crude oil prices internationally and flow onto the pump.

The average price for unleaded 91 petrol in the Limestone Coast is currently at the lower end of $1.90 a litre which is about 10 cents or more cheaper than in Adelaide.

RAA senior mobility manager Mark Borlace is one of the fuel specialists observing the impact the war in the Middle East will have on fuel prices nationally.

“We’re watching what’s happening with the Israel conflict because we saw within the first four or five days about a 5% kick up in the price of crude oil,” he said.

“It has not skyrocketed the way we thought it might but that’s still early days, we have just got to wait and see if the war is contained and it does not involve oil producing countries like Iran.

“Iran has about 4% of the world’s oil so we do not expect the same sort of catastrophic effect on prices that Ukraine did and that’s because Russia was a direct combatant in that war and they were 10% of the world’s oil and they had sanctions put across them.

“All of a sudden 10% of the world’s oil was not easily accessible by the rest of the world and that’s what really drove those prices up.

“Iran is only 4% and they’re not a direct combatant, they’re actually supportive of us, but if it escalates the Americans get involved and Iran gets involved then puts pressure on the security of that oil.

“If Iran pulls out the 4% will be more easily filled by probably some other Middle Eastern countries that will supply that back into in the market, but we’re still watching.”

Mr Borlace said while he did not expect fuel prices to decrease, he was closely monitoring the situation to determine whether they will rise.

“These international things take time, a couple of weeks to flow through into the pump and so far we have not seen any immediate effect of that but it’s a watch and wait to see what happens,” he said.

“We do not anticipate obviously the prices going down anytime soon so it’s only a matter of seeing at what rate they might go up for presumably the better part of the rest of the year.

“We have also had a slight softening of the Australian dollar which has not helped prices either so the combination of those two things means there is underlying pressure on the price of oil, therefore the price of fuel.

“We know the government are looking at it because of the cost-of-living pressures coming from everywhere else but we doubt they’ll do anything like a fuel excise as they did during the Ukraine crisis.”