While petrol and diesel continue to increase and with the excise duty discount nearing the end, there is a small mountain town in Italy that does not have these problems. The municipality purchased the only distributor to avoid its closure and thus making the “mayor’s petrol” available to citizens – but not only – at rock-bottom prices, up to 20 cents less than the national average.
The municipality with the low cost fuel distributor
We are in Valle Castellana, a small mountain town in the province of Teramo. Here, the prices seem to come from another era: 1.75 euros per liter for petrol and 1.89 for diesel. It is the distributor managed directly by the municipality led by the mayor Camillo D’Angelo. In fact, the plant sells fuel essentially at cost price, with a very small margin compared to normal service stations.
And the advantage increases day by day, especially when compared to the average prices in Italy. The latest official data available from the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, updated to today Sunday 23 August, indicate an average self-service price of 2.010 euros per liter for petrol and 2.130 euros for diesel on the national road network. On the motorway the gap grows further: petrol reaches 2.087 euros, diesel at 2.203 euros, with the latter increasing by 0.3 cents compared to the previous day.
The most significant comparison for Valle Castellana, however, is that with Abruzzo. According to Mimit, on August 23 the regional self average was equal to 2.011 euros for petrol and 2.132 euros for diesel. At the municipal pump you therefore spend around 26 cents less for each liter of petrol and 24 cents less for diesel. On a 50 liter tank it means a saving of around 13 euros for petrol and 12.10 euros for diesel compared to the Abruzzo average. Taking a motorway petrol station as a reference, however, the advantage reaches 16.85 euros on 50 liters of petrol and 15.65 euros on diesel.
Because the Municipality manages a distributor
Valle Castellana has around 800 inhabitants distributed in almost 40 hamlets, over an area of around 131 square kilometres. When the owner of the last distributor expressed his intention to abandon the business, the administration began looking for a solution.
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Since March 2022, the municipality has directly taken over the management of the distributor after taking over the license and modernizing the plant. Alternatively, the inhabitants would have had to travel almost twenty kilometers to refuel.
And business is going well: in 2025 the distributor’s revenue was around 500 thousand euros, compared to around 75 thousand euros in the first year of activity. It wasn’t just residents who increased volumes. Commuters, workers, businesses and tourists now arrive at the pump heading towards the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, as well as motorists from the nearby province of Ascoli Piceno.