Once again the fuel companies have been criticised by the Consumer Council for their failure to offer customers the choice they are entitled to. As usual, they have a ready answer to the charge.
Drivers do not want lower-performance '95 octane' petrol, the oil giants claim. That is why it is not on offer in the SAR. When it was available here almost 10 years ago, when unleaded petrol was introduced, no one used it because it adversely affected engine performance and drivers complained. So the companies turned over their spare storage capacity to more of the higher-performance '98 octane' fuel.
The council offers a rather different interpretation for the lack of sales of 95 octane. It claims that most car owners in Hong Kong are unaware that their vehicles can run on today's lower-octane fuel. In fact, a council survey has revealed that three-quarters of the vehicles on the roads would perform perfectly well on it. This is because most engines have since been re-tuned and most new models are designed to use 95 octane fuel.
The price difference, according to the Consumer Council, may be as much as 16 per cent on the average fuel bill. So once again the motorist misses out and the oil companies continue to ratchet up their profits at drivers' expense.
Unlike the row over liquefied petroleum gas and the technical difficulties involved in making that widely available, there can be no excuse for the delay in introducing lower-rated fuels.
The storage capacity already exists. All that the companies have to do is to decide which of the versions of 98 octane they can lose to make room for a lower-priced fuel.