What is This

Are we paying market related prices for our petrol? This page gives an indication of the difference between petrol prices in the USA, Europe and South Africa.

The comparison is not straightforward – many factors come into play, the most important of which are shipping and related costs, and government taxes. For instance, the USA produces most of its own oil, and has relatively low taxes on fuel. On the other extreme, Europe gets most of its oil from the North Sea, so it has very low transport costs, but there are very high taxes on the fuel, thereby making the pump price much higher than in South Africa.

The fuel prices in this page only reflect pump prices, which already include all costs and taxes.

Why is Brent crude used to determine the fuel price?

Brent crude is a light crude oil from the North Sea. South Africa nearly never imports Brent crude, but instead imports most of its oil from the Middle East, and also sources a substantial portion of refined fuels locally from Sasol, so why is Brent crude prices used to calculate our fuel price?

Brent crude is one of the world’s most important reliable benchmark crudes, and the price responds quickly to price signals from the market. It is also one of the crude oil prices that is always available. Two thirds of the world's traded crude oil supplies are priced relative to it, so the price of the crude oil that South Africa imports always moves up and down relative to Brent crude. The price of Brent crude is also close enough to the basket of crudes that South Africa imports, that it makes no substantial difference to the fuel price calculation.