Diesel Within 1.78p of Its All-Time Record; £2 a Litre 'In Sight'
Average diesel reached 197.31p a litre, less than two pence below the record set in June 2022, and petrol hit 173.08p, a high for this war. Since the conflict began on 28 February diesel has risen 54.9p, or 38.6%, and petrol 40.3p. Filling a 55-litre diesel tank now costs £108.52, about £30 more than at the start of the war. The RAC’s Simon Williams said the question is no longer when the record falls but “how far above £2 a litre will it climb?”
Diesel is where the Strait of Hormuz reaches the British driveway. Crude is only part of it: the closure has hit refined products hardest, and diesel is the fuel that moves freight, farms and buses, so its price feeds into food and almost everything else with a delay of weeks. That is the mechanism by which a war seven months old and four thousand miles away turns into domestic inflation, and it is why the Chancellor’s Budget arithmetic is deteriorating at the same time as the forecourt price. Wednesday’s 3.5% jump in Brent, after the New York talks produced no concessions, points the wrong way for October. Watch whether the record falls before the Budget, and whether fuel duty becomes the political question of the month.