Greece may soon stop publishing daily refinery fuel prices online, a move prompted by the country's competition authority, which warns that the current system enables tacit price coordination between the nation's two dominant refiners.
In Greece, refinery fuel prices are currently published each day on the official website of the General Secretariat for Commerce and Consumer Protection. This daily disclosure provides transparency for the market and serves as a key resource for journalists, traders, and industry stakeholders alike. But this long-standing practice may soon be discontinued.
The Hellenic Competition Commission has flagged serious concerns about the potential for anti-competitive behavior in the country's fuel sector. Following a recent investigation into the refining, wholesale, and retail stages of fuel distribution, the Commission found a high risk of tacit collusion between the country's two dominant refining companies—Hellenic Petroleum (ELPE) and Motor Oil. While there is no evidence of explicit price-fixing, the Commission argues that the structure of the market, along with the level of price transparency, allows the companies to silently coordinate their pricing.
According to the Commission's report, the daily publication of refinery prices, combined with limited competition from imports and the use of common international pricing benchmarks, makes it easy for the two firms to monitor one another and align their prices with near precision. In many cases, the reported prices are virtually identical, differing only by fractions of a cent. This level of synchronization, the Commission warns, undermines the conditions for healthy competition.
To reduce the risk of this silent coordination, the Commission is proposing that the public disclosure of refinery prices be abolished. Instead, it recommends that pricing information be shared privately and individually between refineries and commercial fuel buyers. The goal is to reduce the transparency that currently enables real-time comparisons and discourage automatic price alignment between the two major players.
If adopted, this policy would bring an end to the public operation of the Greek government's dedicated fuel price website, https://oil.gge.gov.gr, which has served as a key tool for market visibility and accountability.
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