Fuels: the excise duty cut on diesel is about to expire

Next Monday will be the last day of cutting excise duties on diesel, which has been worth 6.1 cents per liter for about ten days. For the future, the Government has already indicated the path of mobile excise duties. In the meantime, however, prices at the pump have begun to fall, and the framework on which that choice was built may no longer be the same.

The path indicated is that of mobile excise duties: a well-known mechanism by now. Meloni announced it after the Council of Ministers on 16 September: the State will return "to pouring in the greater proceeds" to reduce "the cost at the pump as much as possible". The concept was reiterated, among other things, also in the letter sent a few days ago to the European Commission. Last Tuesday, at the Italian energy summit of Il Sole 24 Ore in Milan, the Minister of the Environment Gilberto Pichetto Fratin confirmed the line, with a prudent formula: "At the moment I can tell you yes".

The calculation of the scenario without discount is easy to do. Without any intervention, diesel would go from today's average, 2.247 euros per liter on the road network, to around 2.308 euros. However, it would remain below the levels of just five days ago, when the average reached 2.369 euros on Monday 28 September.

In the middle there was the move of the companies. That Monday, Eni set a ceiling on its network: 1.99 euros per liter for petrol, 2.19 for diesel, for thirty days which can be extended. Ip moved on the same day, Q8 and Tamoil in the following days, extending the reductions to their plants little by little. Today, between the 3,847 Eni stations and the approximately 3 thousand IPs already adapted, the reduced prices cover almost a third of the network. The result can be read in the averages: in less than a week, diesel lost 12.2 cents, double the expiring discount. Petrol, which has remained out of cuts for months, fell from 2.152 to 2.052 euros.