What the official figures say
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes UK average pump prices every Tuesday. The set for the week commencing 7 September shows the sharpest weekly move since early August:
- Petrol: 164.40p a litre, up 2.79p on the week. That clears the previous crisis high of 162.15p set on 10 August.
- Diesel: 186.36p a litre, up 2.87p on the week, and up from 183.49p a fortnight ago.
- The diesel premium: 21.96p a litre, wider than at any earlier point in this crisis.
On a 55-litre tank that is £90.42 for petrol and £102.50 for diesel. Diesel drivers are now paying just over £12 more per fill than petrol drivers for the same volume of fuel. A year ago that gap was a small fraction of the size.
Diesel and the 192p question
Diesel's high point in this crisis was 192.14p, in the week beginning 13 April. Today's average sits 5.78p below it. At the pace of the last two weeks, that is roughly a fortnight away — and there is a reason to think it could be quicker than that.
Wholesale diesel rose by around 8.5p a litre on the first trading day of September. Wholesale moves take roughly a fortnight to work through to forecourts, so most of that increase had not reached pumps when this week's figures were collected. In other words, a chunk of the next rise is already in the system regardless of what crude does from here. If diesel does clear 192.14p, it will be at its highest since the 2022 record.
Why diesel is moving harder than petrol: The Houthi attacks specifically hit refining rather than crude production — the 400,000 barrel-a-day Jazan refinery was among the claimed targets. Refinery outages hit diesel and other middle distillates more sharply than petrol, because diesel supply was already the tighter of the two. That is the mechanism behind a premium of nearly 22p, and it is why the two fuels have kept parting company since we first flagged the split in early August.
What happened to oil
The direction of travel reversed hard at the end of August. Brent closed at $88.10 on 28 August, then $90.49 on 31 August, and jumped 4.6% to $94.65 on 1 September. It has climbed almost every session since: $95.63, $95.52, $96.28, then $97.00 on 7 September, $97.92 on 8 September and $99.29 today, with an intraday high of $99.69. Brent is up roughly 11% over the month and around 47% on a year ago.
Two things are driving it. The United States and Iran have exchanged military strikes for the first time since July. And Houthi militants attacked several Saudi energy facilities, targeting civilian and economic assets across Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, with the Saudi Foreign Ministry reporting more than 70 civilians injured.
Where forecasters think this goes: Goldman Sachs has said Brent could exceed $120 during 2027 if Gulf crude output stays around 4 million barrels a day below prewar levels — though that is explicitly not its central case. Its base forecast is softer, at about $85 for Brent in December and $80 through 2027. For context, Brent's high for the past year was an intraday $120.88 on 30 April, and its low was $58.66 in mid-December 2025. Nobody should treat any of these numbers as settled.
The number in the headlines is already out of date
This is worth understanding, because it changes how you should read the coverage. The official average is a weekly snapshot taken on the Monday and published the following day. It is accurate and it is the right series for tracking trends, which is why we publish it on our UK Fuel Price Index. But in a week when wholesale costs are rising by several pence, a Monday snapshot is a description of the recent past.
So when you see 164.40p quoted this week, that is not what you will be charged today. Prices have kept moving since Monday, and they vary enormously between forecourts regardless. Our live price comparison and fuel map run on the Government's Fuel Finder feed, refreshed every 15 minutes across over 8,000 stations, which is the only way to see what a specific forecourt is charging right now rather than what the national average was three days ago.
The part you can actually control
None of the above is within a driver's control. The gap between forecourts is. In a rising market the spread tends to widen, because some retailers reprice within a day of a wholesale move and others take a fortnight — and the slow ones are, briefly, the cheap ones. That gap is routinely 10p a litre or more between stations a few miles apart, which on a 55-litre tank is worth more than five pounds. It dwarfs anything the weekly national average is telling you.
There is also a live question about whether retailers pass rises on faster than they pass falls on. The Competition and Markets Authority reported last month that some had been slow to pass on savings as wholesale diesel costs fell, keeping margins at historically high levels, while stopping short of finding profiteering. We covered that in detail in our piece on the CMA's findings on passive pricing. A rising market is the other half of that test.
Practical steps while prices are climbing:
- Fill sooner rather than later. This is the reverse of the advice in a falling market. With wholesale increases still feeding through, waiting a week is likely to cost you rather than save you.
- Check before every fill, not weekly. In a fast-moving market a price you saw three days ago is not the price today.
- Look at supermarkets and independents. The spread between the cheapest and dearest forecourts in a single town is usually worth several pounds a tank.
- Diesel drivers, plan around the premium. At nearly 22p a litre it is the widest it has been. Comparing is worth proportionally more to you than to petrol drivers.
- Save your regulars to Favourites so you can see at a glance which of your usual stations has moved and which hasn't.
- Planning a long trip? The journey planner finds the cheapest stops along your route rather than the nearest ones.
What to watch next
Three dates matter. The next official figures land on 15 September and will be the first to include the bulk of that 8.5p wholesale diesel increase. The Budget on 28 October carries the fuel duty decision, with the rate currently frozen at 52.95p a litre until the end of the year. And whether crude holds near $100 or eases back, as Goldman's base case suggests, determines whether this is a spike or a new floor.
For the immediate picture, our price charts track the weekly averages as they publish, and the live comparison shows what your local forecourts are charging right now. Given how quickly this has moved in ten days, the second one is the more useful of the two.
Sources and dates: UK pump prices are the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel price statistics for the week commencing 7 September 2026. Brent crude figures are settlement prices to 9 September 2026. Attack and strike detail is from contemporaneous market and news reporting. Wholesale movements and forecasts are as reported at the time of writing. Fuel duty is 52.95p a litre with VAT at 20% on top. Oil markets and pump prices are both moving quickly at present, so check the live figures rather than relying on the numbers in this article.