Diesel prices take a breather and reach a new annual low, while petrol remains stable – Good news for motorists’ pockets. The diesel price has once again reached a new annual low, after interrupting a series of six consecutive declines last week. According to the EU Oil Bulletin, petrol has remained practically stable. Specifically, the average price for a litre of diesel has fallen by 0.21% to 1.361 euros, returning to last October’s level. At the same time, the average price for a litre of petrol has hardly risen slightly (+0.008%) for the third week in a row and remains at 1.458 euros. Fuel prices have seen a decrease of 8.9% for petrol and 9.2% for diesel by mid-October, after they had begun a series of consecutive declines in July last year, in the middle of the holiday season and with the highest number of journeys of the year. However, the trend changed radically before Christmas, when diesel and petrol entered a kind of upward spiral until the beginning of this year.
Below pre-war level in Ukraine In any case, a litre of diesel is still below the level before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, when it was around 1.479 euros per litre. The same applies to petrol, which was below 1.591 euros per litre before the war in Ukraine. Furthermore, both fuels are still far from the peaks recorded in the summer of 2022 in July, when petrol reached 2.141 euros and diesel 2.1 euros.
Similarly, the price of unleaded 95-octane petrol in Spain at 1.606 euros per litre and in the Eurozone with an average value of 1.659 euros remains below the average for the European Union (1.606 euros). In the case of diesel, the price for this type of fuel in Spain is also below the EU average of 1.482 euros, and in the Eurozone, where it is 1.512 euros. Diesel and petrol, parallel roads Overall, the diesel price has been below the petrol price for 118 weeks now. This maintains the usual situation before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which caused the diesel price to be continuously more expensive than petrol from August 2022 to mid-February 2023, when the dynamic was broken. In any case, the prices of petrol and diesel depend on several factors, such as their specific price, the development of crude oil, the taxes to which they are subject, raw material and logistics costs, and gross margins. However, the development of crude oil prices is not immediately reflected in fuel prices.
