Small relief, but relief nonetheless, for the pockets of millions of households. In the last week, 95 gasoline registered its first decrease in four months, thus leaving behind its maximum in 2024 and ending a streak of fifteen consecutive weekly increases. Diesel, for its part, has now fallen for three consecutive weeks, according to data published this Thursday in the European Union’s oil bulletin. Although the translation is not direct, the movement coincides with the recent drop in the price of crude oil, its main raw material: today it is around 84 dollars per barrel, compared to the 90 it reached in mid-April.
Last week, a liter of gasoline was around 1.68 euros on average at Spanish service stations, just 0.1% less than seven days before. Diesel, for its part, fell 0.6% to 1.53 euros. The accumulated increase so far in 2024 is close to 10% in the case of gasoline and remains at just 2.5% in the case of diesel. The first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the other hand, resulted in a significantly higher increase in the price of diesel fuel – a fuel that Russia produces in large quantities – than of gasoline.
Five euros more per deposit
Filling an average tank of gasoline (55 liters) today is around 92.7 euros, 4.7 more than just a year ago. If the car is diesel, the cost of filling the tank is 84.2 euros, 5.3 more than at the beginning of May 2023. In both cases, the price is above the values immediately prior to the start of the war in Ukraine, in February 2022. However, it is also far from the maximums reached in July 2022, when two euros per liter were far exceeded.
In continental comparison, gasoline today is around 1.85 euros per liter in the eurozone average and 1.8 euros in the Twenty-seven. Diesel, meanwhile, averages 1.65 and 1.67 euros, respectively. As in Spain, the last week has been one of falls in the rest of the continent.
Crude oil, refining and taxes
The price of automotive fuels depends, more or less, of three variables: the price of oil, refining costs (and margins) and taxes. With this last stable element, it is the crude oil and the refineries that impose their law. On the first front, everything seems to indicate that the cartel of producers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will choose at its meeting on June 1 to maintain its policy of cuts on supply to keep the barrel above 80 Dollars. In the case of refineries, the current situation is much easier than during the energy crisis, when this segment became the main source of profits for oil companies. And the big headache for drivers.