It’s officially happened, 91 Unleaded petrol hit $2 per litre last night. It has been the number that has been on our minds via the New Zealand media’s continual reference to it for months now - so now that it’s happened, will the hype die down? Will we just accept petrol as a commodity with a rising price, and leave it alone? Or - will $3 become the new $2?

While the media hype surrounding the petrol pricing saga hasn’t started to bother me yet, I must say I am finding that opening the paper every other day to a front page story about the price of cheese is becoming a little tiring. Sure, cheese is tasty, but it’s just a topping, not an essential staple. Moreover, in the wake of all of the coverage in recent weeks, I haven’t seen a brand of cheese not on special at my local supermarket (many selling 1kg for under $10).

Now, while I do understand that the increasing price of commodities places hardship on many New Zealand families, economies fluctuate, times have been hard before (and have certainly been much harder) and they will be hard again. Until we get to rationing out meat and dairy, we don’t really have that much to grumble about in New Zealand - and we must note that many products are now cheaper here than ever before (electronics, for example).

In fact, why not see the current global economic situation as a positive, and take the trip to the US? With our dollar hovering around 80 US cents, it has never been a better time to travel Stateside and spend up large. I remember when our currency was half of this just years ago, and I doubt it will ever go higher - so make the most of it now!

Image from Flickr.

The price of petrol is continually on the minds of New Zealanders these days. Going up, going down (the former being the ever-present this month), the price of this essential commodity is causing public concern and media interest all over the country. I was sure that not too long ago I used to fill up my car for less than $1 per litre, but others around me seem to think it was much longer ago that I did, so I set out to get to the bottom of this and find a petrol pricing archive.

To Google I went, and I searched, and searched. Unfortunately, this was proving one of those few moments in life where Google simply cannot find the information you’re looking for. While daily petrol prices were readily available, there seemed to be no online source with an archive for the past decade. After much frustration, I contacted the good folks at Statistics New Zealand, who happily collected the data for me from their archives and promptly e-mailed it to me, even though the data was not even published on their own website.

So I am proud to say that, to the best of my knowledge, NZS.com is the only online source with an archive of petrol prices for the last decade…and the last time 91 Unleaded was under $1 per litre? Just five years ago in June of 2003.

Image from Flickr.