Oxford's major bus companies will not reduce their fares despite the price of oil nearly halving in the last four months.

Oxford Bus Company announced a 6.5 per cent price rise during the summer and attributed the increases to the high cost of fuel. Despite a barrel of Brent Crude oil trading at 60 US dollars down from its peak price of 146 US dollars a barrel in July, the company said it had committed to buying diesel at a fixed price in June to avoid any further price rises for a year.

Managing director Philip Kirk said: “A few months ago, when we did our calculations for the year ahead, even the experts couldn’t predict what would happen to fuel prices. One thing seemed certain to us, though. It was no good changing our fares every few months. So we took the decision to fix the price of the fuel we buy.

“We ‘hedged’ our fuel costs by committing to a fixed diesel price for the next 12 months, knowing that we wouldn’t have to put our prices up again during that time. If we hadn’t done that the fare increase would have been much higher.”

Stagecoach has said it will also not be lowering its prices after a 6.5 per cent fare rise in July.

Spokesman Chris Childs said: “Our July fares increase was to cover increases to all types of operating costs, not just the price of fuel.

“Our bulk fuel prices are also fixed over longer periods of time, averaged to avoid the need for numerous confusing fares changes.”