Hunch. On 30 October the RAC put diesel at 198.79p, a little below the government figure, but Brent crude hit its highest price since April the same day.
The 30 November market resolves on the weekly road fuel prices of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on GOV.UK, out on Tuesday 1 December: YES if UK diesel is above 200.04p a litre in any week from 2 November to 30 November, and exactly 200.04p is NO. RAC and AA estimates do not count, the data file attached to the page is the backup, and BBC or Guardian reports of the government figure confirm it.
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.