RAC Fuel Watch data for November showed the average price of petrol reduced for the fifth month in a row from 107.67p at the start to 106.98p as well as hitting a nine-month low on 11 November at 106.92p.

Diesel, however, reduced to its lowest average price since late December 2009 when it reached 109.48p a litre on 30 November, having started the month at 109.77p.

This means since this time last year the cost of filling up a 55-litre family car with petrol has plunged by £7.75 and a tank of diesel has come down even more, with a fill-up now £8.95 cheaper than a year ago.

The RAC’s prediction of petrol being sold for under £1 also came true with one leading supermarket reacting to the falling oil price and cheaper wholesale fuel by treating customers at its 277 nationwide forecourts to a three-day promotion of petrol at 99.7p a litre. Another linked a £40 in-store spend to a 7p-a-litre forecourt discount taking petrol below the £1 mark.

The report shows a barrel of crude oil fell over $3 in November, coming down from $47.32 to $44.03, with the six-year low of $40.40 being seen on 16 November. Unfortunately, the pound lost a little ground to the dollar – with a pound worth $1.54 at the start of the month and $1.51 at the end – undoing some of the positive effect of the lower oil price as oil is traded in dollars.

RAC Fuel Watch spokesman Simon Williams said: “In the expensive run-up to Christmas, drivers of both petrol and diesel vehicles are benefitting from far cheaper fill-ups than they did at this time last year. While petrol for under a pound a litre has become a reality at the cheapest retailers we would like to see this happen on a non-promotional basis. This depends, of course, on the cost of a barrel of oil staying low and ideally trading down a little closer to $40 for longer – something which is very hard to predict, particularly as OPEC meet tomorrow (4 December) in Vienna to discuss oil production strategy.”

“There has been talk of stabilising the barrel price which would mean stemming production, but it’s difficult to see how that would work when Iran begins to pump up to one million barrels a day in 2016, following on from its landmark nuclear agreement with the West.

HMRC oil duty statistics for October show combined sales of petrol and diesel were 1.9% up on September at 3.905bn litres and up 1.8% on the previous October. Petrol sales (1.461bn litres) were static on September whereas October saw the fifth highest number of litres sold in any month since 1990 with 2.444bn. This was 2.9% up on the month before and 3.7% up on October 2014.

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