Typing mistake causes petrol station chaos

A petrol station in Perth has been forced to sell the most expensive diesel in Western Australia after an employee made a typing error which added an entire dollar of value onto the already expensive fuel.

Independent fuel retailer Burk was forced to sell diesel at nearly $4 a litre at its Cannington petrol station on Tuesday because of strict laws enforced by the WA petrol watchdog FuelWatch.

Since the fuel crisis began, individual petrol stations have been forced to lock in the following day's petrol prices with FuelWatch in order to prevent artificial inflation.

Burk managing director Umar Farooq told 9News that "multiple calls and emails" were sent to FuelWatch to try and rectify the issue, but nothing could be done.

"We were told we can't sell it at the price other than what's been reported," Mr Farooq said.

In a workaround to the issue, the petrol station chose to put a one-day discount of $1.04 on the diesel bowser.

The employee responsible for the error is not expected to face any disciplinary action.