August 11, 2026

IEA Numbers Point to a Two-Speed Recovery in Global Fuel Prices

Five months after the U.S. and Israel opened a war with Iran, global fuel markets still haven't settled down, and the latest IEA data prove it.

The IEA's monthly end-use price tracker, updated Aug. 7 and covering prices through July, shows the average per-liter cost of automotive diesel across the countries it tracks sitting near $1.94 in U.S. dollar terms. That's roughly 14% above where it stood in February, before the war started, and it's actually higher than June, even as crude oil kept sliding through most of the summer.

Gasoline tells a similar but calmer story. The average pump price peaked in May near $1.99 a liter and has since eased to $1.90, basically flat month over month. Diesel, in other words, is the one holding out.

The gap traces back to Feb. 28, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and triggered a war that sent Brent crude soaring from around $72 a barrel to nearly $120 within weeks, the sharpest one-month jump for the benchmark since the 1990 Gulf War. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the corridor that carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil, all but stopped as insurers pulled coverage and Iran threatened to torch any ship that tried to pass.

Crude has since pulled back considerably. Brent has traded near $88 a barrel this week, down from its spring highs but still up more than 30% from a year ago. J.P. Morgan now expects Brent to average $86 in the third quarter and drift toward $78 by year-end, assuming the war doesn't flare up again.

That's a big assumption…

Iran and Oman are still negotiating the terms of a full Hormuz reopening, and the talks have whipsawed prices for weeks. A June 17 memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran collapsed within days over shipping-route disputes, and attacks on tankers and Saudi Arabia's Jazan refinery kept resurfacing through early August.

And the IEA's country breakdown shows how unevenly that volatility has landed.

Germany's diesel and gasoline prices each jumped more than 10% in July alone, but crude wasn't the only driver…Berlin's temporary fuel-tax discount, introduced in May to soften the war's impact at nearly 17 cents a liter, expired June 30.

Poland saw an even sharper jump.

Meanwhile, pump prices actually fell in the U.K., Ireland, Sweden and Cyprus…a reminder that national taxes and currency moves can matter as much as crude itself.

Diesel's stubbornness in July also reflects tighter distillate supply specifically. Ukraine has hit Russian refineries with drone strikes at least 30 times in July alone, pushing Russian crude-processing rates to a 24-year low and triggering fuel rationing in roughly 90% of the country's regions. That's squeezed diesel and other middle distillates globally even as gasoline supply held up better.

In the U.S., the IEA figures put diesel at roughly $4.96 a gallon in July and gasoline at $3.93, both still well above year-ago levels of $3.78 and $3.12.

Whether those numbers come down further depends less on OPEC+ output than on what happens next in the Gulf.