Why Fuel Prices Are Surging Across Europe in 2026 — and When They Might Fall Again

As of the week of 2 November 2026, the EU averaged €2.101 per litre of diesel and €1.867 for petrol in our figures — the highest readings in a European price series that reaches back two decades. Diesel alone is up 24% since late June, has overtaken petrol in 26 of 27 EU countries, and has pushed past its previous record of €1.999 set back in 2022.

This is not one shock but several arriving at once. A widening war in the Middle East and a Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian refineries have squeezed the world's diesel supply from two directions; refining margins have hit record highs; a low Rhine has made barge transport in Germany dearer; and Europe is heading into winter with its gas stores unusually empty. None of these is going away next week, which is why we are treating this as a living report and updating it as the picture changes.

Below: the numbers first, then the six forces behind them, what governments across Europe have announced, and what it all means for the tank in your driveway.

Across the EU-27, the average pump price in the week of 2 November 2026 was:

• Diesel: €2.101/L — up from €1.689 at the end of June, a rise of 24%.
• Petrol: €1.867/L — up from €1.717, a rise of 9%.

Diesel has done something unusual: it now costs more than petrol in 26 of 27 EU countries, by about 23 cents on average, reversing the normal order in which diesel is the cheaper fuel. Filling a 50-litre tank with diesel now costs around €105, roughly €21 more than at midsummer.

The pain is spread unevenly. In the biggest markets diesel stood at €2.282 in Germany (up 29% since June), €2.371 in France, €2.238 in Italy, €2.148 in Austria and €2.468 in the Netherlands, while Spain, at €1.898, remained one of the cheaper large markets. Poland shows the steepest climb of the group — diesel there rose 29% since June to €1.812 as earlier tax cuts unwound.

One caveat on the averages: ours are simple (unweighted) means across EU members, so they read slightly lower than the European Commission's consumption-weighted series. The direction and the size of the move are the same in both.

Official statistics confirm the scale. Eurostat's figures for August show fuel prices across the EU up 23.8% year on year, with 26 of the 27 member states higher and 18 of them above 20%; diesel alone climbed 8.3% in that single month against 3.3% for petrol. The steepest annual rises came in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Finland, Germany and France. At the other end sits Hungary, up just 1.3% — a visible effect of its price cap.

The Commission's own weekly bulletin then set a new mark: in the week of 21 September its consumption-weighted EU diesel average reached an all-time high of €2.23 a litre, up 7 cents in a week, with 19 member states — Germany, France and Italy among them — at record diesel prices. The steepest climbs since late February are in the east and north: Bulgaria (+56%), Czechia (+52%), Estonia (+52%), Finland (+47%) and Belgium (+47%). Only Malta, which freezes pump prices with subsidies, has not moved at all. A week later the weighted average edged up again to €2.24 a litre (bulletin of 1 October), with twelve member states, Belgium, Italy, Romania and Poland among them, setting fresh all-time highs. The bulletin then eased for two weeks — in our unweighted EU series diesel fell from €2.151 in the week of 28 September to €2.079 in the week of 12 October — but diesel has been climbing again since, to €2.084 in the week of 19 October and €2.091 in the week of 26 October (€2.146 in the Commission's consumption-weighted average), while petrol kept falling, to €1.895. German diesel rose to €2.298 in the week of 26 October. The gap between the two fuels is widening again: on 26 October diesel cost more than petrol in 24 of the 27 member states.

Germany, live from our own station data. We track more than 10,000 German filling stations in near real time. As of 9 November 2026, 05:18 (Berlin time), the 9504 open stations in our data averaged €2.237 for diesel and €1.993 for E10 — -16.9 cents and -26.0 cents against the last night before the 1 October tax rebate (29 September: €2.406 and €2.253, same stations, our own measurement). Unlike the weekly Commission figures above, this line refreshes itself every hour, so over the coming weeks it will show whether the rebate holds or creeps back.

The single biggest reason diesel is rising faster than petrol is that the fuel is being choked off from two directions at once.

The Middle East. Fighting between the United States and Iran in and around the Strait of Hormuz — the channel that normally carries about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil — drove Brent crude from around $72 a barrel before the war to a peak above $126. Since the summer the strait has been neither fully open nor fully shut: under US naval escort, flows recovered to about 13 million barrels a day by early October, and Saudi Arabia moves part of its exports around Hormuz through its East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea — a route that has itself been hit, by a drone attack on 13 September and by Houthi missiles since. Every sign of easing has been short-lived. A first opening on 22 September — the pipeline restart and an Iranian offer to reopen the strait within seven days — collapsed within two days; talks then stalled when President Trump rejected Tehran's proposal, and Iran has insisted ever since that the strait stays closed until Washington accepts its conditions. October became the worst month for shipping so far: according to the Washington Institute, 28 ships had been attacked by 23 October, and the UK maritime agency UKMTO counted 32 incidents around the Arabian Peninsula over the month, twice as many as in September. Two tankers caught fire after hitting mines on 18 October; on 26 October, after four more tankers were struck, Iran's Revolutionary Guards declared the strait closed again; and on 30 October the tanker Louise 1 was set on fire by limpet mines north-east of Khasab, the first successful attack of its kind in this war. The US Central Command says the main shipping lanes have been cleared of mines, but tanker-tracking firms disagree sharply on how much oil is still getting through. Brent rose by about 14% in October, its fourth monthly gain in a row: the expiring December contract peaked at about $117.6, and the January contract settled at around $113 on 30 October, a six-month high. Diplomatically there is movement for the first time in weeks: US Vice President JD Vance has sent Tehran a letter through Qatar, delivered on 25 October, proposing direct talks that would include the nuclear question; Qatari mediators returned to Tehran on 30 October, and on 31 October Iranian officials said the tone had “completely changed”, while foreign minister Abbas Araghchi called the letter a positive step. But Iran says there will be no talks and no reopening until its seven conditions are met, President Trump told Fox News on 25 October that Tehran should “make a deal” or the United States would “finish it off”, and US media report that plans for new strikes are ready for after the midterm elections on 3 November.

The Red Sea. The sea route that brings Gulf and Indian cargoes to Europe through the Suez Canal has its own chokepoint, and it is now contested too. In an offensive that began in early August, the Houthis seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coast by mid-September — the port of Mokha on 10 September, then Perim island in the strait and the Hanish islands — and now control the Bab el-Mandeb strait, about 20 km from the African shore, through which some 4.2 million barrels of oil a day passed in the first half of 2025. On 4 October Yemen's Saudi-backed government launched a major offensive to retake the coast; it claims to have recaptured Mokha, which the Houthis dispute, and the Houthis say they have struck another Aramco site. By 6 October government forces had retaken the towns of Dhubab, Bab and Hadeid, just north of the strait. The Houthis have since carried the war into Saudi Arabia itself: missiles struck Riyadh on three consecutive days from 10 October — the first attack killed 12 people — and Saudi Arabia has hit back at Houthi fuel depots. In late October the Houthis fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia almost daily — debris damaged buildings in Riyadh on 27 October — and on 26 October claimed hits on Riyadh airport, on pumping stations of the East-West pipeline and on Yanbu, which Saudi Arabia has not confirmed; the Saudi-led coalition struck Houthi missile sites and tunnels the same day. Saudi oil exports have held up so far, at about 6.5 million barrels a day in October, some 2.5 million of them from Yanbu. With Hormuz shut and Bab el-Mandeb fought over, both of the region's sea exits are now in play.

Russia. At the same time, Ukraine has been striking Russian refineries with long-range drones — on the International Energy Agency's count, roughly one successful hit every three days over the first eight months of 2026, with a record 21 strikes in August alone that pushed Russian refining to its lowest level in more than two decades — and the attacks have continued almost daily into late September, hitting Ryazan, Saratov, Syzran and Yaroslavl and taking a small refinery in the south offline on 25 September. Three of Russia's six largest diesel refineries have been knocked out or throttled, and diesel output has fallen by roughly a quarter to a third. On 8 July Moscow banned diesel exports outright to protect its home market and kept extending the ban. After a deal between Presidents Putin and Trump on 9 October — Washington temporarily waived its sanctions on Russian fuel, until 7 April 2027 — Moscow began letting diesel out again under export quotas: about 510,000 tonnes left the country in October and about 2.15 million tonnes are planned for November, while the general ban for producers has been extended to the end of January 2027; Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak expects up to 3.5 million tonnes in total by the end of the year. The EU condemned the deal and keeps its own embargo on Russian oil products, so the extra diesel helps Europe only indirectly, by easing the world market. Petrol exports remain banned until the end of January. The refinery war, meanwhile, slowed under US pressure: after Ukraine hit the Ryazan refinery on 15 October and an oil terminal and fuel depot near St Petersburg on 18 October, it paused its strikes on refineries for almost two weeks and targeted steel plants instead — Russian refinery runs recovered by about a quarter in the second half of October — before drones hit the Novokuybyshevsk refinery on 30 October. Before the strikes Russia supplied about a tenth of the world's diesel. Industry estimates put the combined loss at roughly two million barrels a day of Russian product and a similar amount from the Middle East.

More OPEC+ oil has not filled the gap. The group finished unwinding its voluntary production cuts over the summer, but with war disrupting actual exports those increases have made little difference to physical supply. Even the largest emergency stock release in the International Energy Agency's history — some 400 million barrels, ordered in March — only cushioned the blow. OPEC+ left its targets for December unchanged on 1 November and will set its quotas for 2027 on 29 November. Europe is now drawing on its own stocks again: on 29 October France announced that European countries will release 42 million barrels over three months, half of it diesel and sold at cost, as their part of the G7's 100 million barrels; France alone contributes 10 million barrels of diesel, and President Macron has also secured around 300,000 tonnes of diesel a month from the Gulf. And other suppliers are holding back: China paused all fuel exports during its early-October holiday week before approving around 3.7 million tonnes of petrol, diesel and jet fuel for the rest of the month, slightly less than in September, and Europe's diesel imports fell in September to about one million barrels a day — the lowest September on record and some 600,000 barrels a day below a year earlier. Diesel — the fuel of trucks, tractors and heating — is simply harder to find than it has been in years.

Even where crude is available, turning it into diesel has become extraordinarily profitable — a sign of scarcity, not of gouging. The refining margin for diesel, the gap between crude and finished fuel, topped $100 a barrel for the first time in history in August, against a normal $20-40. European refiners have switched from making jet fuel to making diesel to chase it, and analysts had expected the diesel margin to peak in October — but on 28 October the European Commission opened a high-level dialogue with the refining industry on how to squeeze more diesel and jet fuel out of Europe's plants, a sign that Brussels is preparing for a longer squeeze. That margin now accounts for around 19% of the diesel pump price against 8% for petrol — which is precisely why diesel has outrun petrol.

The Rhine adds a German twist — and it just got worse. The gauge at Kaub, the river's key chokepoint, had already fallen into single digits in mid-August, below the 25 cm low of 2018. A brief rise in the second half of September did not last: in late September the gauge fell below zero for the first time in roughly 170 years of records, and on 1 October it reached minus 6 cm, the lowest level ever measured there, according to the official readings of the federal waterways administration (PEGELONLINE). It then hovered between about minus 2 and plus 22 cm; rain lifted it to 61 cm on 28 October, its highest level in a month, but by the evening of 1 November it had dropped back to 19 cm, still far below the 77 cm low-water mark. Barges that carry diesel and heating oil inland can sail only a fraction full, if at all: only scattered freighters were moving on the critical St. Goar-Mainz stretch, and the low-water surcharge for a container passing Kaub reached €1,350. By early October this year had seen 74 days below the low-water mark, against 41 in the whole of 2022. Tanker freight from Rotterdam to Karlsruhe had already climbed to €60-70 a tonne by midsummer from about €45 in late June. In the first week of the rebate the bottleneck reached the pump: from 5 October individual stations in Cologne, Bonn, Koblenz, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg temporarily ran dry, mostly of diesel, as rebate-driven demand outpaced deliveries. Aral and Shell confirmed supply restrictions and pointed to the Rhine; the station operators' association stressed that it was a disrupted delivery rhythm, not a fundamental shortage. That is a big part of why German diesel, at €2.282, sits well above the EU average.

The exchange rate quietly makes it worse. Oil is priced in dollars, and with the euro around $1.14 every dollar of crude costs Europeans more than it does Americans. By the European Central Bank's own rule of thumb, each sustained $10 rise in oil adds about half a percentage point to euro-area inflation — so this is a fuel story that is also becoming an inflation story.

The surge is not only at the pump. Europe's gas stores, the buffer for winter heating and power, are unusually low: about 75% full at the end of October, after a record low for the time of year in early October, and so have missed even the lowered fill target of 80% (traditionally 90%) for 1 November. The Dutch TTF gas benchmark climbed above €100 a megawatt-hour on 28 October for the first time since December 2022 and stood at around €103 on 30 October. What that means for heating bills is covered in our report on the heating winter.

Because gas-fired plants set the electricity price in most hours, that feeds straight through to power. In our own wholesale data the German day-ahead price averaged €144/MWh in September against €— in July — a —% jump — with one September hour spiking to €740. France rose about —% and the Netherlands about —% over the same stretch. Households will not feel all of this at once, because retail tariffs lag the market, but a cold snap before storage recovers would be felt quickly. You can watch the hourly moves on our wholesale electricity pages.

With prices at records, governments have reached for the tax lever — and pressure is building on Brussels and Washington too.

• Germany has now made its rebate law. On 25 September the Bundestag passed the cut in energy tax of 14.04 cents a litre — about 17 cents at the pump once VAT is counted — by 434 votes to 128 in a roll call, and the Bundesrat approved it the same day; it runs from 1 October to 31 December and costs about €2.5 billion, split between the federal government and the states. The rebate took effect at midnight on 1 October — and, unlike in the spring, most of it showed up at once: at 8 a.m. the ADAC's national averages were 14.5 cents lower for E10 and 15.2 cents lower for diesel than a day earlier, roughly 87% and 91% of the 16.7-cent relief; by late morning E10 averaged €2.052 and diesel €2.197, and E10 dipped below €2 at many stations in Munich, Stuttgart and Leipzig (rarely in Hamburg or Cologne). Within days, though, the ADAC saw part of the relief already eaten up: on Sunday 4 October its daily averages were €2.137 for E10 and €2.253 for diesel, 2.3 and 0.9 cents above Thursday — a rise it called hard to understand from a consumer's point of view, since oil prices and the exchange rate had barely moved — while the industry association en2x insists the full 17 cents were passed on. Our own data from more than 10,000 stations shows a different picture at night: in the nightly snapshot of 5 October diesel averaged €2.241, 16.5 cents below the last pre-rebate night and so practically the full rebate, coinciding with a drop of almost 6% in diesel wholesale prices on 2 October; E10 averaged €2.125, 12.8 cents lower. The two measurements do not contradict each other: the ADAC averages the whole day including the expensive daytime hours, while our comparison holds the time of day fixed. A week in, both now point the same way: our nightly averages bottomed out on 7 October (diesel €2.222) and have since crept back up, to €2.251 on 9 October, leaving diesel about 15.5 cents and E10 about 11.5 cents below the pre-rebate night. The ADAC's weekly review of 7 October (E10 €2.126, diesel €2.233) found most of the relief arriving for diesel but a clearly larger gap for E10, and called on the oil companies to pass the cut on in full. Three weeks in, the raw comparison looks better than the verdict of economists: in our nightly snapshot of 21 October diesel averaged €2.238 and E10 €2.083, 16.7 and 17.0 cents below the last pre-rebate night — but that includes market moves since then. The DIW institute, which adjusts for changes in product prices, concluded on 15 October that only 67% of the rebate has been passed on so far, and only about 9 cents since 8 October. The ifo institute reached a friendlier verdict on 22 October: in the week of 14-20 October the full 17 cents reached the pump for E5, 16 cents for E10 and 14 cents for diesel, and since 1 October 16 cents for E5 and 14 cents each for E10 and diesel. In its weekly review of 28 October the ADAC put E10 at €2.084, 2.6 cents lower than a week earlier, and diesel at €2.289, 3.4 cents higher — widening the gap between the two fuels to 20.5 cents. For reference, the Bundeskartellamt's pre-estimate, based on the May-June round, had been 13.8 cents for diesel and 13 cents for petrol, and during that first rebate the ifo institute found diesel passed on just 12 of 16.7 cents. The Bundeskartellamt cannot force full pass-through, but it is monitoring daily. A separate price cap is supposed to follow by 1 January at the latest — an authority would regularly set maximum pump prices from the product price plus transport, storage and insurance costs, for as long as the crisis lasts — but two months before the rebate expires there is still no concrete model: the SPD is pressing Economy Minister Katherina Reiche, who is sceptical of a cap and rules out extending the rebate beyond 31 December. On 16 October the Bundesrat also approved the release of 19.5 million barrels from Germany's strategic oil reserve, lowering the mandatory stockholding from 90 to 82 days.
• Czechia goes furthest, and its controls also started on 1 October: the finance ministry now publishes daily maximum prices derived from wholesale quotes — 48.72 koruna (about €1.93) a litre for diesel and 46.14 koruna (about €1.83) for petrol on day one — caps station margins on standard fuels at 2.50 koruna (about 10 cents) a litre, and cut diesel excise from roughly 41 to 33 cents, now extended until 30 November; prices fell overnight across the country, by up to three koruna a litre in places. A 50% levy on refiners' extra margins applies for 2026 and 2027.
• France added a €450 million package on 22 September: a €100 payment to 5.5 million people who drive at least 30 km a day or 8,000 km a year for work, energy vouchers of €48-277 sent to 5.8 million households three months early, and the sector-specific diesel rebates — 35 cents a litre for fishermen, 20 for public-works vehicles, 15 for farmers — extended to the end of the year. Anger over prices has since spilled onto the streets, with nationwide protests on 17 October and a new “yellow vest” mobilisation on 24 October, and the government has ordered the release of 10 million barrels of diesel from strategic stocks.
• Italy cut diesel by 12.2 cents a litre for the second half of September, tapering to 6.1 cents until it expired on 5 October; after three weeks without relief the government brought back a diesel cut of about 4.9 cents a litre from 28 October to 7 November, financed from extra VAT revenue; moved to scrap road tax on smaller cars, and has paused the demolition of coal-fired power plants while cutting paperwork for oil and gas projects.
• Spain keeps its fuel tax break at 20 cents a litre in November, because its automatic trigger — annual fuel inflation above 15% — is still met, with diesel 34% dearer than a year earlier; Poland cut fuel VAT from 23% to 8%, has capped pump prices since 3 October (diesel at no more than 7.88 zloty a litre) and, after the president relented, now taxes fuel producers' windfall profits; Hungary is paying €55 per family diesel car; Lithuania has halved train fares. More than a dozen member states now have some relief in place — and EU drivers are spending an estimated €203 million a day extra on diesel alone.

At EU level the tone has shifted from advice to demands — and Brussels is pushing back. French President Emmanuel Macron wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 18 September asking for emergency exemptions from EU fuel-quality specifications — density and desulphurisation rules he says could lift output by 5-20% — plus higher biofuel blending in diesel and a one-year delay to the methane regulation due in January 2027; the Commission is examining the request. German finance minister Lars Klingbeil, at the Dublin meeting of EU finance ministers, asked the Commission to propose ways of taxing oil companies' excess profits by next month — to which Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis replied that there are no plans for an EU-wide windfall mechanism “at this stage”, though Brussels is “ready to engage in discussion” and member states are free to tax on their own. On 9 October, however, the EU's finance ministers asked the Commission to examine a tax on the windfall profits of oil and gas companies and set up a working group. Across the Atlantic, a US threat came and went within days: Washington asked the EU to release 120 million barrels of diesel from emergency stocks and, according to Reuters, told France and Germany they faced a US diesel-export ban if they refused — real leverage, since the US has supplied about a third of Europe's diesel imports this year and roughly half in August. Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen answered: “We fully reject any ban on diesel”, adding that it “would undermine our trust in the United States as a reliable partner”. On 2 October the G7, under the French presidency, agreed instead on a coordinated release of 100 million barrels of diesel and crude through the International Energy Agency over four months, with a “frontloaded substantial diesel release within the first 20 days”, and pledged to refrain from energy export restrictions; President Trump then said the export ban was “never really on the table”. So far the Commission has loosened state-aid and spending rules for energy relief while stressing that it cannot set the world oil price; on 28 October it opened its refinery dialogue with the industry, and energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen warned at the energy ministers' meeting on 29 October that Europe faces a difficult winter. The common thread across all of it: almost every measure targets diesel, the fuel doing the most damage to household and business budgets.

For a typical driver the €21 added to a diesel fill since June is the visible cost; for hauliers, farmers and anyone who heats with oil, the same move lands many times over. Two practical points follow from the data.

First, the diesel-over-petrol reversal changes the old advice. For years a diesel car was the cheaper long-distance choice; with diesel now 23 cents above petrol in most of the EU, that gap has narrowed or flipped. If you are choosing between two cars, or two rental options, run today's numbers rather than yesterday's habit.

Second, the spread between countries and between stations is unusually wide right now, so shopping around pays more than usual. Our tools are built for exactly this: the European fuel price ranking shows where each country stands today, the country pages such as Germany, France and Italy map live station prices near you, and our traveller's fuel guide covers cross-border tips for a continent where a short detour can save real money.

Nobody can promise a date, but the data points to what to watch.

• Refining margins were expected to peak around October, yet diesel is rising again while petrol falls; the diesel premium will ease only once refiners catch up and more Russian and Gulf diesel reaches the market, even if crude stays high.
• The Rhine briefly recovered from its record low of minus 6 cm on 1 October to 61 cm on 28 October, but was back at 19 cm on 1 November, against a low-water mark of 77 cm — so barge deliveries stay scarce until sustained rain arrives, as the empty pumps along the Rhine in the first rebate week showed.
• Gas storage is the winter wildcard: a mild winter lets Europe coast on stores of about 75%; a cold one would pull on power prices and, indirectly, on refining costs.
• The wars remain the biggest unknown. October was the worst month yet for shipping around Hormuz, with mines, limpet charges and a renewed Iranian declaration that the strait is closed; at the same time a US letter to Tehran has brought the first diplomatic movement in weeks. What to watch now: Iran's formal answer and whether direct talks begin, what President Trump decides after the US midterms on 3 November, whether Houthi strikes on Saudi export routes escalate, and whether Ukraine's refinery campaign resumes in earnest.
• Emergency stocks are the one lever that has already moved the market: when the G7 release of 100 million barrels, frontloaded with diesel, took shape on 2 October, European diesel futures fell almost 6% in a day. Europe's share — 42 million barrels over three months, half of it diesel — is now being released; whether that reaches the pump depends on how quickly the barrels flow.

Fixed points for the coming weeks: the US midterm elections on 3 November; Italy's new diesel cut runs until 7 November; OPEC+ sets its quotas for 2027 on 29 November; Czechia's price controls and excise cut run until 30 November; and Germany's 17-cent rebate expires on 31 December — the price cap that is supposed to follow from 1 January still has no concrete model.

Our best read as of the latest update: the rebate is reaching German drivers better than many feared — the ifo institute finds about 14 of the 17 cents for diesel and the full amount for E5 — but diesel is rising again across Europe while petrol falls, Brent is at a six-month high and the Rhine is low again. Relief now depends on whether Washington and Tehran start talking and on how fast Europe's stock release reaches the pump; and when the rebate ends on 31 December, the tax on every litre in Germany rises again by about 17 cents unless the promised cap or another measure takes its place. We will revise this section as the evidence changes.

This is a living report. The prices above are read live from our database and refresh on their own as new weekly and hourly data arrive; the analysis is reviewed and revised by hand as events move.

• 1 November 2026 — October was a record month for attacks on shipping around Hormuz (28 by 23 October according to the Washington Institute); Iran's Revolutionary Guards declared the strait closed again on 26 October, while a US letter to Tehran brought the first diplomatic movement in weeks; Brent rose about 14% in October to around $113 (January contract, 30 October); Russia extended its diesel-export ban to the end of January but lets diesel out under quotas (about 2.15 million tonnes planned for November); Europe releases 42 million barrels from its stocks; OPEC+ kept its December targets; Italy reintroduced a diesel cut of 4.9 cents (28 October to 7 November); Czechia extended its controls to 30 November; ifo: about 14 of the 17 rebate cents reach the pump for diesel; ADAC (28 October): E10 €2.084, diesel €2.289; EU diesel in our series up again to €2.091 (week of 26 October); Kaub back at 19 cm on 1 November. Correction: on 18 October Ukraine hit an oil terminal and fuel depot near St Petersburg, not a refinery.
• 22 October 2026 — Russia partially lifted its diesel-export ban after a Trump-Putin deal on 9 October (US sanctions waiver until 7 April 2027), while Ukraine resumed refinery strikes (Ryazan 15 October, St Petersburg region 18 October); a wave of tanker attacks in Hormuz, now with mines, lifted Brent to a five-month high of $111.99 (20 October); Houthi missile strikes on Riyadh; DIW: only 67% of the German rebate passed on; our nightly averages on 21 October: diesel €2.238, E10 €2.083; Germany releases 19.5 million barrels of oil reserves; Spain keeps its 20-cent tax break in November, Italy's diesel cut expired on 5 October; EU diesel average in our series down to €2.080 (week of 12 October). Rhine readings corrected with official gauge data: the record low at Kaub was minus 6 cm on 1 October.
• 10 October 2026 — China's October export halt corrected: exports resumed after the holiday week (about 3.7 million tonnes approved for October); a new wave of attacks on nine tankers around Hormuz lifted Brent to around $105 on 8 October while Trump spoke of “productive discussions”; Yemeni government forces retook Dhubab, Bab and Hadeid near Bab el-Mandeb; Poland capped pump prices from 3 October and enacted its windfall tax; the rebate is eroding — our nightly diesel average rose from €2.222 (7 October) to €2.251 (9 October), and the ADAC sees a clearly larger gap for E10; first rebate week in the EU bulletin (week of 5 October): German diesel €2.254, 18 cents below the week before; Kaub at 4 cm on 10 October.
• 6 October 2026 — Red Sea added as a second front: the Houthis have held Yemen's Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb strait since mid-September, and Yemen's Saudi-backed government launched an offensive to retake it on 4 October; the US diesel ultimatum ended in a G7 release of 100 million barrels (2 October) after the Commission rejected any export ban; China paused fuel exports for October and Europe's September diesel imports hit a record low; individual stations along the Rhine ran dry from 5 October; ADAC daily averages rose again after the rebate start (4 October: E10 €2.137, diesel €2.253), while our nightly data (5 October) shows diesel 16.5 cents and E10 12.8 cents below the pre-rebate night; Kaub at 9 cm on 6 October; Iran says Hormuz stays closed until its conditions are met; EU diesel at a new record of €2.24 (Commission bulletin of 1 October).
• 2 October 2026 — Live line added from our own German station data: on the evening of 2 October the 10,377 open stations we track averaged €2.268 for diesel and €2.123 for E10, 13.8 and 13.0 cents below the last pre-rebate night (29 September, €2.406 and €2.253); the same-time nightly comparison (29 September vs 1 October, 23:55 UTC) shows 11.5 and 11.1 cents — roughly two-thirds of the 16.7-cent relief, close to the Bundeskartellamt's pre-estimate. Live EU figures now reflect the week of 28 September (diesel €2.152, petrol €1.974), still before the rebate.
• 1 October 2026 — Germany's rebate passed its first-day test: ADAC averages fell 14.5 cents (E10) and 15.2 cents (diesel) by 8 a.m., about 87-91% of the 16.7-cent relief, with E10 at €2.052 and diesel at €2.197 by late morning; Czechia's daily maximum prices (48.72 koruna diesel, 46.14 koruna petrol) and margin cap took effect; Washington demanded the release of 120 million barrels of EU diesel stocks and threatened France and Germany with an export ban, with the Commission and five governments conferring; Tehran received the US answer to its Hormuz offer while Trump voiced doubt that peace is possible; Brent eased to around $100-104 as Hormuz flows recovered to 13.2 million barrels a day; the Kaub gauge hovered around zero.
• 29 September 2026 — Rhine passage corrected: the Kaub gauge fell to minus 3 cm on 26 September, the first negative reading in about 170 years, with shipping largely halted; US-Iran talks stalled after President Trump rejected Tehran's Hormuz proposal (Brent about $107), while Saudi pipeline flows are back to around 3.5 million barrels a day; the Commission's refusal, for now, of an EU-wide windfall tax, Trump's backing for a US diesel-export ban, and the pass-through caveats ahead of Germany's 1 October rebate added; Russia's petrol-export ban noted.
• 25 September 2026 — Germany's Bundestag (434 to 128) and Bundesrat passed the 14.04-cent energy-tax cut, in force from 1 October; the 22 September easing reversed after Houthi missile strikes on Yanbu (Brent back above $105); Russia extended its diesel-export ban to 31 October; the Commission's bulletin recorded an all-time EU diesel high of €2.23 with 19 countries at records; France's €450 million package, Spain's automatic tax trigger, Italy's coal-plant pause and the Commission's push against a US diesel-export ban added. Live prices refreshed to the week of 21 September: EU diesel €2.138, petrol €1.959.
• 23 September 2026 — Oil eased to around $98 after Saudi Arabia restarted its East-West pipeline and Iran offered to reopen Hormuz; Germany's cabinet approved the 17-cent rebate (parliament to vote this week); Czechia's margin cap and diesel-tax cut added; EU-level pressure (Macron's letter, the windfall-tax push) and Eurostat's August figures added; Rhine and Russia sections refined.
• 21 September 2026 — First published: EU diesel at €2.075 (week of 14 September), above the 2022 record; six drivers identified; Germany's 17-cent relief and other national measures summarised.