I paid $2.10 for gas yesterday. That was for 95, and it's the highest price in the couple of years now since the crude slump. 

It's been steadily creeping up - it was down around 1.80 $only a month or so back.

Now the big gas company Z reckons it's working on wafer thin margins, and only comes out with about 5 and a bit cents per litre once everything is paid for.

Having said that, Z does admit it's managed to improve margins on fuel. 

I think what's really upsetting Labour's energy spokesman Stuart Nash, who says we're being ripped off, is the fact we've got one very big company now with almost half the retail fuel market.

Since Z bought Caltex that's effectively how much of the sector it controls. Which means it doesn't control the other half.

Stuart Nash said there's a lack of competition and he's demanding an investigation. If the margins were really skinny then you could understand the price Mr Nash said, but the margins are higher than they've been for a long, long time.

He goes on to say "you sort of get the feeling we're being ripped off to a certain extent" Are we? Really?

Do you think we're paying too much for gas? And if so, why?

AA Petrolwatch said the price went up 3 cents this month, and it said that increase was unnecessary.  

For 91, the price before any discounting is $2.02, and the margin - the gross margin - is now 43 cents a litre.

The AA calculates the margin on diesel as 50 cents a litre, and said that's far too high.

When you compare prices here with prices in Australia, you get yourself a nasty shock.

Over there a litre of 91 is around the $1.30 mark at the moment, which comes out to roughly $1.35 in our money. And why is that?

There's one simple reason we're paying more. Tax. Excise duty and GST.

Between them they add up to about half the forecourt price of a litre of fuel, so for every litre, you're paying almost a dollar now to the Treasury.

Across the ditch the tax on fuel has only just come out of a freeze put in place when John Howard was running the show, so their tax is around about 40 cents a litre.

So we pay a dollar in tax, and the Aussies pay about 40 cents. So are we getting ripped off on fuel? Oh yes, I'd say so. Royally ripped off.

But the culprit is the grasping tax-hungry Treasury, not so much the gas companies.