In news that will baffle long-suffering local drivers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) this week claimed Tamworth was not paying grossly inflated prices for fuel and local service station retailers were not profiteering at our expense.

It comes after a Northern Daily Leader investigation found the city was one of the most expensive centres for fuel in the state and retailers in smaller towns such as Walcha and Barraba were consistently cheaper than Tamworth. Yesterday, Walcha Tyre Service was selling unleaded for 134.9c a litre, while Tamworth servos were averaging 146.9c/L.

In a letter to Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson, ACCC chief operating officer Rayne de Gruchy doused any hopes the watchdog would launch a full-blown investigation into Tamworth fuel prices.

“Our monitoring indicates that fuel prices in regional locations such as Tamworth can often be ‘sticky’ and at times are higher than some neighbouring regional towns and cities, but on average over the financial year 2013-14 prices in Tamworth compared favourably with a number of other towns in the region,” Mr de Gruchy said.

“Persistently higher petrol prices in a particular regional market are generally an indicator of a lower level of competition in the local fuel retailing market.

“The ACCC can take action where there is evidence of a breach of the provisions of the act (such as an agreement between competitors to fix prices or not pass on price decreases).

“However, high prices, of themselves, are not necessarily an indicator of illegal behaviour.”

But Mr Anderson has renewed calls for an official probe into the local market and urged local drivers to “shop around”.

“There appears to be an unspoken acceptance by (retailers) where they think prices should be,” Mr Anderson said.

“They wait until someone gets cranky and then prices come down again.

“This is what we saw last week.”

The day after The Leader launched its Bowser Buster campaign last week, fuel prices dropped across the city.

Mr Anderson said short of an ACCC investigation, people power was the best way to combat high prices.