The Committee's report examines the recent price increases in gas supply and the resulting rises in electricity prices (as about 40 per cent of electricity generation in England and Wales is gas-fired), focusing on the effects of the price increases on all types of energy customers. The report seeks to assess whether the rises are a temporary response to short-term supply problems or the start of a long-term increase in UK energy prices, and to consider possible responses by Ofgem, the regulator of the gas and electricity markets, and the DTI to the problem. Topics discussed include: Ofgem's report into wholesale gas prices and reactions to it; the decline in production from the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS); gas storage and supply issues; the behaviour and transparency of the gas market and regulation issues; oil indexation in gas contracts; competition within European markets; vertical integration; the electricity market; new infrastructure projects; and the future of gas prices.

This paper investigates the response of consumer price inflation to changes in domestic fuel prices, looking at the different categories of the overall consumer price index (CPI). We then combine household survey data with the CPI components to construct a CPI index for the poorest and richest income quintiles with the view to assess the distributional impact of the pass-through. To undertake this analysis, the paper provides an update to the Global Monthly Retail Fuel Price Database, expanding the product coverage to premium and regular fuels, the time dimension to December 2020, and the sample to 190 countries. Three key findings stand out. First, the response of inflation to gasoline price shocks is smaller, but more persistent and broad-based in developing economies than in advanced economies. Second, we show that past studies using crude oil prices instead of retail fuel prices to estimate the pass-through to inflation significantly underestimate it. Third, while the purchasing power of all households declines as fuel prices increase, the distributional impact is progressive. But the progressivity phases out within 6 months after the shock in advanced economies, whereas it persists beyond a year in developing countries.

This paper assesses the dynamic pass-through of crude oil price shocks to retail fuel prices using a novel database on monthly retail fuel prices for 162 countries. The impulse response functions suggest that on average, a one cent increase in crude oil prices per liter translates into a 1.2 cent increase in the retail gasoline price at peak level six months after the shock. However, the estimates vary significantly across country groups, ranging from about 0.5 cent in MENA countries to two cents in advanced economies. The results also show that positive oil price shocks have a larger impact than negative price shocks on the retail gasoline price. Finally, the paper underscores the importance of the new dataset in refining estimates of the fiscal cost of incomplete pass-through.