Asda sparked the petrol price war as it announced that from Thursday, drivers filling up at any of its 308 forecourts would pay 2p per litre less for unleaded following further decreases in wholesale costs.

As it sets a national price cap, drivers will pay no more than 113.7p per litre for unleaded, while diesel remains at 116.7p per litre.

Sainsbury’s quickly followed suit, announcing it too would cut the price of unleaded by up to 2p per litre across its 311 forecourts.

It added that motorists will also be able to collect Nectar points when filling up.

Izzy Hexter, Sainsbury’s fuel buying manager, said: “We always aim to provide our customers with fantastic prices and great quality across all of our products and services and we hope this petrol price drop will help put more back in their pockets.”

Morrisons responded with its own up to 2p per litre price drop on unleaded petrol, taking effect tomorrow morning across its 333 stations.

Steve Mosey, services director, said: “We are responding quickly and aim to be the cheapest retailer in every town that we sell petrol.”

Tesco was the final retailer to announce a petrol price cut – shaving 2p per litre at its 500 filling stations from tomorrow.  to find out if it would follow its competitors but it was yet to respond at the time of publication.

Rodger Beer, petrol buying manager, said: “We know that the cost of fuel really matters to our customers which is why we are cutting the cost of unleaded petrol by 2p per litre from tomorrow. This reduction at all our 500 petrol filing stations will mean millions of shoppers save money when filling up at Tesco.”

The move by the supermarkets comes just a day after the RAC called for a price cut. Simon Williams of the RAC, said: “A day after we called for a price cut it’s encouraging to see the supermarkets have responded by taking 2p off a litre of unleaded. Despite a similar cut in late September the conditions have been right for a further reduction for nearly two weeks so it’s a shame in the interests of price transparency this hasn’t come sooner.

“What motorists need now is for every petrol retailer, large and small, to do the same to bring down the average price from 119p a litre to 117p. Looking at the wholesale petrol market there are good signs that prices could go lower still.”