UK diesel is just below its 200.04p record. Will it go higher by 30 November?
The government's weekly survey put UK diesel at a record 200.04p a litre on 12 October. On 26 October it was 199.22p.
What happened
BP’s quarterly profits hit an 18-year high of $8.46bn, as the war in the Middle East drove up oil and gas prices and the profits from turning crude oil into diesel soared.
Diesel cost 200.04p a litre on . That is the highest price in the weekly survey of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), which began in 2003. The old high of 199.22p stood from until , when diesel reached 199.52p. Since the price has eased a little, to 199.33p on and 199.22p on . Petrol was 174.07p.
BP made $8.46bn in three months, its highest profit in 18 years. It earned almost $47 on each barrel of crude oil it turned into fuels such as diesel. The Guardian says pump prices hit all-time highs in the UK and the US and across Europe because of serious problems at refineries in the Gulf region and in Russia. The motoring group RAC put diesel at 198.79p on , by its own count.
The government sets fuel duty, a tax of 52.95p on every litre, and the Budget of froze it. On the UK opened talks with European allies about releasing emergency diesel stocks. Brent crude oil, the world price, briefly passed $117 a barrel on , its highest since April.
Road fuel price statistics providing average UK retail ‘pump’ prices on a weekly basis.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Weekly road fuel prices, GOV.UK
Sources: The Guardian (2), GOV.UK, GOV.UK, BBC, Al Jazeera
The Pattern
We looked for cases where an official weekly fuel price in Europe or the US set a new high and then eased for two weeks, staying within 1 per cent of it. We kept only times when war or sanctions cut fuel supply. Each time oil refiners also reported their biggest profits in years, and governments had released emergency oil stocks together. We found seven such highs, all in 2022, and checked whether the price went higher within seven weeks.
Show the other 5 cases
The Read
The past leans towards a new high, but timing matters. Three of the four new highs came 21 to 28 days after the peak, and one came on the 49th day. For today’s price, the 28th day is . Each new high was only 0.5 to 1.6 per cent above the old one, which today means 201.08p to 203.22p. Where no new high came, the price was 4.9 to 8.2 per cent below its peak seven weeks later, which today means below about 190.3p. No price stayed close to its peak for all seven weeks.
There are reasons for doubt. All seven highs come from one wave of price rises in 2022, and the two times the price fell away came within one week, at the end of June and start of July. UK diesel kept falling after , and on BP reported its biggest profit in 14 years. Romania’s government cut the pump price by 0.50 lei a litre from , for three months, though the weekly figures show no drop of that size. On the RAC put diesel a little below the government figure, while Brent crude reached its highest price since April.
Sources: GOV.UK, EIA, European Commission, BBC, Government of Romania, The Guardian, Al Jazeera
Disclaimer
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