Live Brent & WTI prices, official UK fuel pump pressure, HMRC trade flows and a war-room geopolitical risk board — all in one calm command desk. The same eCharts engine you use for crypto, but pointed at oil.
A live composite of Brent & WTI moves, GBP weakness, dollar strength, UK fuel pressure, trade-route exposure and geopolitical risk. Rises when conditions could pressure UK pump prices.
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Every penny at the pump, broken into duty, VAT, the crude input and the residual refinery / wholesale / delivery / retailer margin. Built from official UK fuel duty (52.95p/L), VAT at 20%, and live Brent priced into GBP.
Tax (duty + VAT) and crude cost are roughly the same per litre on both fuels — that's how the maths works. The big gap is the residual layer: refinery, wholesale, delivery and retailer margin. On petrol that residual is around 27.88p / 17.8% of the pump price. On diesel it is 55.23p / 29.1% — almost double. Translation: diesel is being squeezed by refinery and product-stream pressure (winter middle-distillate demand, refinery outages, jet/diesel competition) far more than petrol right now. Crude isn't the problem — the diesel barrel itself is.
Four pressure dials, written in plain English. Each one summarises a different layer of the fuel price stack so you can see at a glance where the pump pressure is actually coming from.
Tax is the single biggest line on petrol — 50.4% of pump price (79.12p). Duty is fixed by HMRC at 52.95p/L; VAT scales with the rest of the bill, so when crude rises, VAT rises too.
Brent around $108.07 with GBP/USD near 1.3594 works out at roughly 50p of crude per litre. A weaker pound or a Brent spike feeds straight into pump pricing within ~2 weeks.
Petrol margin layer is calm at 17.8%. Diesel margin layer is elevated at 29.1% — that's the refinery / wholesale / delivery / retailer slice telling you the diesel barrel itself is tight.
Petrol stack reads orderly. Diesel stack reads stressed at the product layer. Watch refinery headlines and middle-distillate inventories more closely than crude itself for the next 1–2 weeks.
Six oil-risk themes the UK pump is exposed to. Each is rated stable, watch or elevated based on the latest live read. Plain English so anyone can use it.
OPEC+ holding the line on output. No major new barrels coming. Any single Gulf or Russia headline can bend Brent fast.
Global demand is steady — no recession shock, no demand spike. Quiet on this front for now.
This is the live pressure point. Diesel cracks are wide, the residual margin layer on diesel is at 29.1%. Refinery outages or maintenance bite straight into the pump.
Petrol 156.99p, diesel 189.81p. Tax burden is fixed and high. Any crude or sterling move will land here within a fortnight.
Brent around $108. Range-bound but the floor is firm. The risk is asymmetric — bigger upside than downside on a shock.
Diesel premium over petrol is +32.82p. That's the residual layer talking — diesel is the stressed barrel right now, petrol isn't.
Side-by-side petrol vs diesel: pump price, tax burden, product/refinery layer and what it means for the consumer. The numbers without the noise.
Petrol drivers are paying mostly tax. The product layer is calm. If crude doesn't move, petrol shouldn't either.
Diesel drivers — fleet, haulage, vans — are paying for refinery tightness, not for crude. A diesel premium of +32.82p over petrol is the signal.
Quotas, compliance and spare capacity. The thing that actually moves Brent more than any single news headline.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UAE all over-complying. Iraq still the laggard but its overshoot has shrunk to ~80kbpd. Discipline rare for OPEC+ historically — current cohesion is bullish for Brent.
Saudi Arabia holds the entire global spare capacity buffer. If a supply shock hits and the Saudis don't open the taps, Brent can spike 20% in a session. They're the floor and the ceiling.
Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee. Market is pricing a rollover of current cuts. Any signal of unwinding voluntary cuts = Brent down 4–6%. Any extension or deeper cuts = Brent up 3–5%.
Shale operators are NOT ramping despite Brent above $100. Capital discipline + investor pressure + DUC backlog drained means the marginal barrel response is slower than 2018–22 cycle. Bullish structural read.
Where the bottleneck actually lives. Refinery utilisation, turnaround season, distillate yields and the European product imbalance.
Running hot. Above the 5-year average. Any unplanned outage at this utilisation level cascades quickly into product cracks because there's no slack. Watch Pembroke, Stanlow, Rotterdam.
Heavier than average — combined ~1.2 mbpd capacity offline through May. Squeezes diesel cracks especially because middle-distillate units are over-represented in the maintenance schedule.
European refiners are running configurations that produce relatively less diesel per barrel of crude than historical norms — partly Russian VGO loss, partly product slate optimisation toward jet. This is why diesel cracks stay wide.
Middle East and India are increasingly the marginal diesel supplier into the UK. Saudi Yanbu, Indian Reliance Jamnagar. Adds 2–3 weeks of shipping time vs Rotterdam, which means UK diesel reacts to crude moves with a ~14-day lag.
The actual profit margin per barrel of crude turned into product. When cracks widen, refiners crank up runs. When they collapse, refineries cut runs and product gets tight fast.
Plain English: Diesel cracks at $34.85 are well above the 5-year average ($18–22). Jet is firm. Gasoline normal. Fuel oil weak (IMO 2020 still biting). The market is telling refiners "make more diesel" but they can't — yields are constrained, maintenance is heavy. That's why the diesel pump premium is widening, not because crude is tight.
The shock absorbers. US SPR, OECD commercial stocks and floating storage. When buffers shrink, the market loses its safety net and Brent gets jumpy.
Lowest level since 1983. Down ~290 mbbl from the 2020 peak after the 2022 Biden release. Refill pace ~3 mbbl/month — at that rate, 25 years to refill. Brent has lost a major political put.
Below the 5-year average. Crude stocks at the low end, distillate stocks lean. Tight, but not dangerously so. Any single supply shock would push these into the bottom decile of historical range.
Lowest in 18 months. Backwardated curve makes floating uneconomic. This is bullish near-term — there's no overhang of cheap stored barrels waiting to be sold into a price spike.
Approaching tank-bottom levels (~20 mbbl is operational minimum). When Cushing gets this low, WTI–Brent spread can blow out and futures roll mechanics get violent. Watch for prompt-month squeezes.
Live geopolitical risk board and breaking oil headlines. Powered by GDELT live news scan plus the same risk model that drives the Stress Index above.
Reading live geopolitical risk feed…
Scanning live oil headlines…
Where UK oil actually comes from (HMRC OTS official data) plus the simple stack that explains why crude isn't the whole pump price.
Reading official trade-flow data…
Pump prices stay firm even when crude cools — because refining margins, freight, tax and FX often offset the move.
Reading the stack… give me a moment to connect to live feeds.