Australian Institute of Petroleum has revealed that petrol prices have touched back on to their pre-price war levels with the national average price of unleaded registering a rise of 3.7 cents to 126 cents a liter in the last week to March 7 - the first rise in three weeks and the biggest weekly rise in over a year.

In addition, the recent data depicts the price of a liter of unleaded fuel has climbed everywhere except the Northern Territory.

Victoria witnesses the price to jump by 5.4 cents and only South Australian motorists copped worse with a 5.6 cent rise to an average of $1.26 a liter.

Last week the price changes were smaller and were falls rather than rises.

Moreover, analysts at CommSec had cautioned motorists to speculate petrol prices to soar by a further 2-3 cents a liter within two weeks, after the cost of oil in Australian dollars rose by almost 5 percent.

"The heavy discounting was clearly an unsustainable scenario", Mr. Sebastian said. "And after selling petrol for what was virtually below cost, petrol stations are once again increasing margins in an attempt to remain profitable".