Sharply rising wholesale fuel costs have seen forecourt operators in the UK increase their prices 102,274 times already this month, four times the number of price hikes that were implemented in the whole of August.
The UK’s 8,300 or so petrol stations implemented just 25,201 price increases in August, when retailers dropped their prices 11,934 times. For comparison, September (up to 10am on Sept 22) has only seen 4,818 reductions so far.
Both diesel and petrol have been subject to significant volatility, with 54,514 diesel price rises in September compared to 15,637 in August, a 248% upswing in price-rise incidents. Unleaded prices were put up 47,760 times in September by fuel retailers but only 9,564 times last month, a 399% increase.
The figures come from the government’s Fuel Finder database, which shows September 14 saw the highest number of diesel price rises, with 4,211 increases at an average of 2.19p. September 7, meanwhile, saw the most (3,667) unleaded price changes, with the average rise being 2.4p.
Over the last two months, August 10 saw the highest daily hike in diesel prices rises, with the average increase from forecourts that put up their prices being 2.88p. For unleaded, September 8 saw the biggest rise, with a 2.43p average increase.
September 7, meanwhile, saw the most retailers increase prices by over 3p in one go, with 569 such rises implemented for diesel, and 522 jumps of 3p or more for unleaded.
This volatility echoes that of the global oil market, which has seen the price of a barrel rise from $75 in early August, to $105 in mid-September.
Retail data was drawn from Fuel Finder by My Automate, owners of Petrol Prices, before being analysed by Forecourt Trader.
