Petrol and diesel prices

This page is a short summary of the full PDF report Petrol and diesel prices.

Sources: See main document

This paper looks at trends in the price of petrol and diesel at the pump and before tax, possible reasons for the gap in prices between the two fuels and compares prices and taxes in different countries.

Recent trends in road fuel prices

Months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Oil prices jumped on 24 February 2022, when Russia lauched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and continued to rise through early March 2022. This led to very large increases in road fuel prices to new record levels at the time. 

The rates of duty on petrol and diesel were cut by five pence per litre on 23 March 2022. This initially led to a fall in the price of both fuels, but by less than five pence per litre. This drop in prices was soon reversed and there were particularly large increases in late May and June 2022. Both petrol and diesel prices set and broken many new records in this period. They peaked on 4 July 2022 at 191.6 and 199.2 pence per litre for petrol and diesel respectively.

Summer 2022 to early 2026

Prices generally fell between summer 2022 and summer 2025. There were short-lived increases in autumn 2023, spring 2024 and winter 2025. Between summer 2025 and early 2026 prices were relatively stable at around 135 pence per litre for petrol and 143 pence per litre for diesel.

There was also a sharp fall in the gap between diesel and petrol prices in summer 2023. It had reached record levels in late 2022. The price gap increased again in late 2023, but did not approached record levels.

Impact of the Middle East conflict

On 28 February 2026 the US and Israel began a series of strikes on Iran. The ensuing conflict led to oil supply disruption and a spike in prices of oil and petroleum products. Weekly data shows prices increased in the following six weeks by 26 pence a litre for petrol and 51 pence a litre for diesel. Prices fell back after a ceasefire was announced in April, but spiked again when this collapse in July. The impact on diesel prices has greater and these reached a record high of 199.5 pence per litre on 5 October 2026, surpassing the previous high from July 2022.

Tax

Fuel duty rates have been the same for petrol and diesel for many years and are currently 52.95 pence per litre. They were frozen in the 11 years to March 2022, cut by five pence per litre in March 2022 in response to sharp increases in pump prices following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This cut in the duty rate has not been reversed.

The current duty rate is the lowest since March 2009 in cash terms and the lowest since February 1992 in real terms.

Sources: Hydrocarbon Oils Bulletin, HMRC; ONS, CPI all-items

Competition and Markets Authority report on road fuel pricing

In July 2023 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published the final version of its report on its road fuel market study Supply of road fuel in the United Kingdom market study. Its conclusions included:

• Competition between retailers has weakened in recent years.
• Retail margins in fuel retail have risen significantly since 2019.
• Historic price leaders among the supermarkets had ‘significantly’ increased their margins on fuel in recent years, with the largest increases coming in 2022-23. Other retailers followed their price lead.
• The average fuel margins at the big four supermarket retailers increased by an estimated 6 pence per litre between 2019 and 2022, costing their customers an estimated £900 million.
• Retailers increased their diesel margins more than for petrol in in 2023. This meant drivers paying 13 pence per litre more for diesel in the first five months of 2023 than if margins were at their 2017-2022 average.
• There were ‘significant’ drops in the price of fuel after each of the interim reports in this study. This indicated “…that there was room for retailers to reduce prices”

The report said that based on its analysis:

…there is clear evidence in the data of rocket and feather pricing for diesel in 2023. The evidence from the retailers suggests that this may have been used as a strategy to increase margin in a manner that is less visible to consumers than increasing prices.

The increases in margins on diesel in 2023 that the report identified imply an additional cost to consumers of around £1.6 billion, taking to total cost to consumers of this and the higher supermarket margins between 2019 and 2022 to around £2.5 billion.

Local Data

The government’s Fuel Finder dataset is published twice daily and lists road fuel prices at all forecourts in the UK. petrolprices.com and other websites produce maps of petrol and diesel prices at individual sites.

Further information

Trends in the pump and pre-tax price of road fuel and other petroleum products are given in The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Collection of road fuel and other petroleum product price statistics.  

The RAC’s Fuel Price Watch includes up to date prices, longer term trends and a breakdown of the different price components. The Hydrocarbon Oils Bulletin from HMRC includes details of changes in duty rates and revenues.

The European Commission’s Oil Bulletin gives a weekly comparison of pump and pre-tax prices of fuels across the EU. The International Energy Agency’s Monthly Oil Prices shows trends in fuel prices for the largest OECD economies. Their Oil Market Report gives background to changes in oil and product prices.

The associated spreadsheet to this paper includes the following reference tables:

• • Breakdown of typical UK road fuel since 1990
  • Latest average Petrol and Diesel Prices and Taxes in the EU and UK