With various conflicts and instabilities across the globe, fuel prices are on the rise.
How is this looking where you are?
Near me, 10th March 2026
Petrol:
Highest: 143.9p per litre (Esso)
Lowest: 137.9p per litre (Shell)
Diesel:
Highest: 161.9p per litre (Esso)
Lowest: 150.9p per litre (Tesco)
Let’s find out who has the cheapest & priciest fuel in the country.
Just use this instead:
I’m driving to Ireland next week, not thrilled
With inflation plugged into the 2003 price then £1,37 is right but then in 2012 is was about £1.37 a litre so inflation puts that at £1.99.
Overall we’re still in a better place than we could be!
Apparently, it got this high in the early stages of the ‘3-day special military operation’ in 2022. I’d forgotten.
Well of course it did… Russia produces oil, had sanctions so people couldn’t buy that oil so the other markets had a bit of a squeeze.
The real fear is if this is long term or not. Geopolitics is a messy business that can’t really be summed up in a few sentences (and cause ANOTHER thread drift) but as ever, we all just have to get used to having even less money than we should have!
Our office south of Dublin reports 2 Euro a litre for Diesel today !
Diesel hit 2 quid in places.
Indeed. First lock down in 2020 I saw unleaded at less than £1. Then, June 2022 there was diesel over £2. Crazy ranges.
I actually managed to fill up the diesel tank today, at only 145.9p per litre. 10p per litre cheaper than anywhere else I had seen!
You’re not wrong; cheapest I could find yesterday was 181.9 for diesel.
They might not like being accused of it, but the industry is definitely profiteering.
The increase in cost of crude oil hasn’t actually reached the consumer yet, so expect the prices to explode in the near future
On a slightly different note - the last delivery of jet fuel reached the UK today. The shortage starts now!
and human fuel is cheap porridge, chicken nuggets, and mash to power the rotation of the tyres 
I’m seriously considering cycling to work again. 
Oil is currently at around $120; in 2022 and 2014 it topped $100. If the barrel cost doesn’t decrease then it will continue to rise, but (my understanding of it is)…
Part of the reason fuel rises so quickly (but doesn’t drop as fast) when oil purchased at a spiked rate doesn’t flow into consumer tanks for a month or two is to essentially amortise P&L over a period of time.
Pump prices spike sharply to make more now, expecting to make less later, but they don’t initially rise to a point which represents parity with target margins at that higher purchase price. There’s an anticipation/hope that prices drop again, which factors into why there’s often a sharp rise at the pumps followed by a trickling increase of pence per week in some instances.
Another consideration for this, is that there’s only so much price pressure that consumer demand can withstand, and it’s often (across many markets) considered better to have a medium to hard hit to prices early, than a potentially larger one later or lots of smaller, but not insignificant rises.
As evidenced here:
Other examples would be that a weekly bus ticket and increased travel times becomes more appealing and people significantly reduce their for-leisure driving. Wholesalers and retailers still need to shift the stuff, and there’s breakpoint where too few sales are made for an increased margin to cover operating costs. (Though I think that breakpoint is less of a concern in modern times, there is still an impact to the calculation from people reducing usage).
PlayStation have just massively bumped prices, and there’s speculation that part of the reason is to insure against further increases later - big jump early and take the PR hit in one shot instead of generating a regular bad news cycle of constant inflation. The other speculation is in preparation for GTA6, but…
Other factors for fuel in the short term are wholesaler and retailer demand attempting to front-load early on the open market to avoid only getting the highest rate after everyone else has battled it out. Then long term supply (and those later, trickle increases) is further impacted if production or release of reserves doesn’t pick up slack.
Circling back to my comment about prices not dropping as rapidly, as well a kind of “making the margins last” element, this delayed reduction can also be driven by lower-volume retailers having tanks full of the expensivo stuff; so while anyone who’s bought considerably cheaper doesn’t have to keep prices as high (assuming they aren’t covering losses from) they also don’t have to drop too much to become more competitive and attract customers. But also, they may have some losses or reduced margin average to rectify.
Oh, and fuel and energy wholesale is essentially a cabal that loves to capitalise on a crisis and make more money - it’s probably more the retailers that play a slightly more coy game.
100%
If I owned my home, I’d have already long ago invested heavily in solar, storage & heat pumps. Energy independence applies at the personal level just as much as at the national level, and people who have followed this track are sitting pretty right now. Especially if they also have an electric car.
Energy and fuel is, for those reasons, a prime example of how those with the least get shafted the most.
