For a customer filling a 50-liter tank, some offers available at the weekends throughout the three summer months translate as a €5 saving on a €76 purchase needed to take a medium-sized car to the beach from Warsaw to a resort like Międzyzdroje on the Baltic Coast.

Poland’s largest chain of gasoline retailers, the partially state-owned Orlen, has introduced a weekend discount of 8 cents a liter on one of its ranges of regular gasoline and diesel, upping the offer to 10 cents off for customers using large family discount cards issued by local councils.

Orlen’s move is not an isolated one, as others have followed suit. Rivals Canadian-owned Circle K have also given their loyalty app customers a summer discount of 7.5 cents per liter on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, as has British-based BP.

Lotos gasoline stations are also offering a 7.5-cent discount for motorists buying up to 50 liters. The company is currently being rebranded as MOL by its new Hungarian owners, who bought 410 Lotos stations, as part of the EU regulators' deal to allow Lotos to be taken over by Orlen. Along with its existing 85 stations in southern Poland under the Slovnaft brand, MOL is the third-largest chain in Poland.

Not to be outdone is Amic, an Austrian-owned chain with 118 stations throughout Poland, which is also launching an offer today giving its clients an 8-cent discount per liter up to a maximum of 50 liters. Similar to offers from other stations, their summer deal includes cheaper car washes at the weekend.

After a slump in oil prices in May, June saw oil prices return to peak levels in the commodities markets, and the same is true of gasoline. Analysts at Goldman Sachs have told customers that tensions in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on Russian fuel depots “are still on their radar” as the most likely reasons for price hikes.