oilprice

What a litre costs

Every country the scrapers reached in the latest run, converted to US dollars at the exchange rate captured in that same run. The dashed line is what the crude in a litre costs, and everything to the right of it is refining, freight, duty, levy and margin.

Which crude, though. Brent is North Sea and WTI is American, but a refinery in Karachi or Dhaka is buying Arab Light from Saudi Arabia and Murban from the UAE, and those cargoes are priced off Dubai. The sellers do not all charge the same, so the line moves depending on whose barrel you mean.

Crude over time

One country, against each seller

The same litre, split four ways. The bar is what it costs at the pump; the coloured part is the crude inside it, priced against one seller at a time. Everything to the right of that is refining, freight, duty, levy and margin — and it changes depending on whose barrel you say went in, which is the honest reason nobody quotes a single number for “the tax on fuel”.

The same country over time

Pump prices in US dollars per litre, run by run. Each point uses the exchange rate captured with it, never today’s applied backwards — so a move in this line is a move in the price or in the currency, and both are real.

Coverage