Indices and pricing

How we turn live market and reserve data into the supply health index, the price build-up from crude barrel to bowser, and the trigger thresholds behind the homepage status.

How a litre is priced

From crude barrel to bowser: crude cost, refining, freight, taxes, and margins

Calculated from official data

What makes up a litre of petrol

Built from live feeds and totalling about $1.98/L: crude from Brent and the AUD/USD rate, the refining, freight and wholesale block measured from the AIP wholesale price, the retail margin from the pump-to-wholesale gap, and excise and GST from the legislated rates. Prices vary by location and cycle. Open any layer for the full story.

Calculated from official data

Crude oil cost82.3c42%

Crude oil cost Calculated from official data

Brent crude at US$91.82/barrel converts to A$131/barrel at today's exchange rate (AUD/USD 0.7018). Divided across 159 litres per barrel, that's the base cost of the raw material.

Before the conflict, Brent traded around US$73/barrel (the official pre-conflict anchor: the week ending 20 February 2026, per ACCC weekly monitoring). At current levels of US$91.82/barrel it is about 26% above that pre-conflict baseline. The AUD/USD exchange rate (currently 0.7018) also affects the local price: every 1 cent move in the AUD/USD rate shifts the pump price by approximately 1.2c/L. (Source: FRED; ECB reference rates via the Frankfurter API.)

Refining margin28.0c14%

Refining margin Calculated from official data

The cost of turning crude oil into usable petrol at refineries in Singapore, where most of Australia's fuel is refined.

Australia's refining margin is set by the Singapore crack spread (the difference between refined product prices and crude oil input costs). Australia has only two domestic refineries (Lytton in Brisbane and Geelong in Victoria), with a combined nameplate capacity of roughly 229,000 barrels/day; Geelong returned above 90 per cent of capacity in June 2026 after its residue catalytic cracking unit restart, following the April 2026 fire. Against national demand of about 1.1 million barrels/day, even at full capacity they cover less than 23% of our own needs, so we are price takers on the international market. At about 28c/L the refining margin sits well above the pre-crisis norm, reflecting the Singapore crack spread and the renewed Strait of Hormuz closure (declared 12 July 2026) tightening Gulf crude feedstock. (Source: ACCC petroleum monitoring, AIP, Ampol/Viva Energy reports.)

Shipping and freight7.9c4%

Shipping and freight Calculated from official data

The cost of transporting refined fuel from Singapore to Australian ports (10 to 15 days by tanker).

Freight costs rose during the 2026 crisis on the back of war-risk insurance premiums and rerouting. They eased through the mid-June reopening but have climbed again since the Strait of Hormuz was declared closed on 12 July 2026: hull war-risk cover has hardened to around 5 per cent of vessel value (above the March closure peak) and eight of the nine largest carriers are rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 15 to 20 days per voyage. The pre-crisis norm for shipping was 1.5 to 2c/L. (Source: S&P Global Platts, Lloyd's List, shipping industry data.)

Wholesale and distribution12.6c6%

Wholesale and distribution Calculated from official data

Terminal storage, pipeline transport, and the wholesale margin taken by fuel importers.

This covers the cost of storing fuel at import terminals (more than 55 major fuel terminals across Australia; published counts vary with how a terminal is defined), transporting it via pipeline and road tanker to service stations, and the margin taken by the four major importers: Ampol, Viva Energy, BP, and ExxonMobil. During crises, terminal access fees can spike as storage becomes scarce. The ACCC monitors this layer closely for any signs of price gouging.

Fuel excise (relief)36.6c18%

Fuel excise (relief) Official statistic

Temporarily reduced to 36.6c/L (full rate: 53.7c/L; a 31.8 per cent cut). Full rate resumes 3 August 2026.

The fuel excise is indexed to CPI and adjusted twice yearly (February and August). The full rate is 53.7c/L. On 30 March 2026 the Albanese government announced a temporary reduction to 20.6c/L (a 61.6 per cent cut, deeper than a halving) for three months (1 April to 30 June 2026), reducing the cost of a 65L tank by roughly $23.67 at the pump. On 20 June 2026 it was extended at a reduced rate (Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief No. 2) Bill 2026): from 1 July to 2 August 2026 the excise sits at 36.6c/L (a 31.8 per cent cut, about 18.8c/L cheaper at the pump than the full rate, around $12.23 on a 65L tank). The full 53.7c/L rate is scheduled to resume on 3 August 2026 unless further extended. Each step (1 July and 3 August) is about 17.6c/L at the pump. Sources: PM media release 20 June 2026; Treasury; Department of Infrastructure factsheet. The ACCC is monitoring to ensure retailers pass on the full saving. During the 2022 fuel price spike, the Morrison government reduced the excise to 22.1c/L for six months (a 50 per cent cut). The excise generates roughly $19 billion annually for the federal budget (source: ATO). It is the single largest non-crude component of the pump price.

GST (10%)18.0c9%

GST (10%) Official statistic

10% Goods and Services Tax applied on everything above, including the excise.

A quirk of Australian tax law: GST is calculated on the total price including excise, which means you pay tax on a tax. At today's prices that adds about 18.0c/L to the pump price. Unlike the excise (which is fixed per litre), GST rises proportionally with the base price, so it amplifies every other cost increase. Some economists argue this creates a perverse incentive for government to allow high fuel prices.

Retail margin12.5c6%

Retail margin Calculated from official data

What the service station operator keeps.

The retail margin is typically 5 to 10c/L and is the component most subject to local competition. During crises, the ACCC's fuel monitoring unit watches this figure closely. Margins above 15c/L trigger investigations. Independent stations in regional areas typically have higher margins (8 to 12c/L) due to lower volume and higher transport costs. The major branded sites (Ampol, BP, Shell Coles Express) tend to sit at the lower end. If you're comparing prices, the retail margin is where the difference sits.

How this is sourced: crude, excise and GST come from official feeds and the legislated rates. The combined refining, freight and wholesale margin is measured as the AIP wholesale terminal gate price (GST and excise removed) minus crude, and the retail margin as the pump average minus that wholesale price. Only the split of the wholesale block into refining, freight and wholesale is our editorial estimate, as no public feed separates them daily.

GST is 10 per cent of the pre-GST total including excise (ATO mechanism), so the GST line moves with both crude prices and excise policy.

Two scenarios at today's crude price

Pre-crisis pricing

Federal excise 53.7c/L (full rate)

GST 19.7c/L

216.7c/L

Crisis relief (current)

Federal excise 36.6c/L (temporary)

GST 18.0c/L

197.9c/L

The temporary excise relief is saving roughly $12.22 per 65L tank versus pre-crisis pricing (excise delta of 17.1c/L plus the GST on that delta). The full rate resumes 3 August 2026.

National average pump price197.9c/L

The bottom line: Only 82c of every litre is the actual oil. Government taxes (excise plus GST) account for roughly 28 per cent of today's pump price. When politicians talk about "high oil prices", that's only part of the picture.

Last updated: 27 July 2026 Next update: Recalculated as the crude, wholesale and retail feeds update Source: EIA (database) (Brent), Frankfurter (database) (AUD/USD), AIP terminal gate price (wholesale), state government feeds (retail average)

Supply health index

Six components, weighted composite, and score thresholds

Calculated from official data

The supply health index is a composite score that combines six indicators into a single 0 to 100 measure of Australia's fuel supply security. It appears on the homepage and on /fuel-supply.

The six components

Each component publishes its explicit weight, cadence, and primary-source URL. Weights mirror the live computation in the health index engine and sum to 100 per cent.

Reserve levels35 per cent Official statistic
National days of cover from DCCEEW, scored on a piecewise-linear curve anchored at 0 days = 0, 30 days = 50, 60 days = 80, 90 days = 100 (the IEA target). Because Australia structurally holds well below 90 days, this component is structurally capped below 100, so the index measures movement within that range, not progress toward a full score. The per-importer MSO is shown alongside cover as a reference, not as the scoring anchor.
Update cadence
Weekly (Saturdays)
Primary source
DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics
Price stress20 per cent Official statistic
National average pump price versus the pre-crisis baseline (PRE_CRISIS_RETAIL.petrol, 171.0 c/L, the AIP national average for the week ending 22 February 2026, the last full week before the crisis). Score linearly maps 0 per cent above baseline = 100 down to 50 per cent above baseline = 0, blended with a weekly price-volatility sub-score when that data is available.
Update cadence
Daily on weekdays
Primary source
State government mandatory price reporting plus AIP
Crude oil trajectory15 per cent Official statistic
Brent crude current level plus week-on-week change, compared against the official pre-conflict baseline (US$73/bbl, the ACCC weekly monitoring average for the week to 20 February 2026). Score linearly maps US$73 = 100 to US$120 = 0.
Update cadence
Daily on weekdays
Primary source
FRED Brent crude (DCOILBRENTEU)
Inbound supply15 per cent Editorial assessment
Import source health (Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, and Middle East capacity). Editorial 0 to 100 score; reverts to live tanker tracking when a paid MarineTraffic subscription is active.
Update cadence
Editorial, reviewed weekly
Primary source
DCCEEW import composition plus EIA chokepoint reports
Geopolitical risk10 per cent Editorial assessment
Chokepoint status (Hormuz, Malacca, Red Sea, Indonesian straits) weighted by relevance to Australian supply. Editorial 0 to 100 score (0 = max risk, 100 = stable).
Update cadence
Editorial, reviewed weekly
Primary source
EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints plus DFAT advisories
Refinery output5 per cent Editorial assessment
Australian domestic refining capacity at Lytton (Ampol) and Geelong (Viva), plus regional capacity in Singapore and South Korea. Score is a capacity ratio against nameplate, not a percentile.
Update cadence
Editorial, reviewed weekly
Primary source
AIP Weekly Petrol Prices Report plus ASX disclosures (Ampol, Viva Energy)

Score thresholds

Score	Band
0 to 20	Critical
21 to 40	Strained
41 to 60	Tight
61 to 80	Adequate
81 to 100	Secure

Five bands, worst to best: Critical, Strained, Tight, Adequate, Secure. The thresholds are calibrated against historical Australian fuel security events. Before June 2026 the upper bands were published as Severe, Elevated and Healthy; the scale and cutoffs are unchanged, only the labels were renamed so no band shares a word with the separate trigger-tone taxonomy documented below.

The exact scoring curve and calibration for each derived component is set out below. Open a row for the formula and worked examples.

Understanding the refinery output score

The refinery output component is a 0 to 100 score representing actual domestic throughput as a percentage of combined nameplate capacity at Lytton (Ampol, Brisbane) and Geelong (Viva Energy, Victoria). It is an editorial assessment reviewed against the AIP Weekly Petrol Prices Report and the DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics release.

Baseline: nameplate capacity, not a pre-crisis average. A score of 100 would mean both sites are running at full rated throughput. The score is a capacity ratio, not a percentile, because neither refinery routinely hits 100% even under normal operating conditions (planned maintenance cycles, tank rotation, and feedstock switching all reduce effective throughput).
What a score of around 65 means: crisis-mode maximisation. Before the February 2026 Hormuz crisis the combined site sat closer to 55%, because deferred maintenance windows and normal operating slack kept both sites below 60. A sustained score of 65 reflects both sites running hot: maintenance deferred, tank rotation compressed, and feedstock shifted towards the highest-yield crudes available on the current Asian spot market.
Maintenance deferral impact: the June to August 2026 scheduled turnaround at Lytton, and minor works at Geelong, were deferred by operator decision to keep domestic supply available during the crisis. The deferral unlocks roughly 300 million additional litres of domestic fuel across the deferred window. The trade-off is elevated outage risk over the following 12 months as the deferred work catches up; an unplanned shutdown of either site during that period would pull the refinery output score back to roughly 30 to 40 until the offline site returns.

Editorial assessment

Last updated: Reviewed monthly Source: AIP Weekly Petrol Prices Report, DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics

Why the six components are weighted the way they are

The six components combine into the 0 to 100 supply health index using a weighted average. Weights reflect each component's load-bearing role in crisis forecasting, not equal importance. Their relative weighting, heaviest to lightest, is set out below.

Reserves (largest weight): because strategic reserves measure how much runway Australia has if every other indicator turns against us at once. When reserves fall, every downstream indicator matters less.
Price stress (second largest): retail price is the most visible supply-demand signal at bowser level. It captures both inbound scarcity and domestic rationing pressure simultaneously.
Crude: Brent is the upstream price driver. It sits below price stress because crude-to-pump pass-through lags by several weeks, so it is a leading but noisy indicator.
Inbound supply: tanker arrival cadence is the real-time pipeline refilling reserves. Weighted alongside crude because both are forward-looking signals; crude tells us what refiners will pay next, tanker counts tell us whether physical volume will actually arrive.
Geopolitical risk (lower weight): qualitative editorial assessment. The lower weight reflects that the score is an expert judgement rather than a quantitative measurement, and the other five components already absorb most geopolitical spill-over through price and reserves.
Refinery output (smallest weight): because domestic refining covers under a quarter of demand. About 77 per cent of refined product is imported as finished product, and counting the imported crude the two domestic refineries run on, overall liquid-fuel import dependence is about 90 per cent (see the Data sources section). Even a full domestic outage would only pull headline supply by roughly a quarter, so refinery capacity is the lowest-leverage component.

When a component has no data, it is dropped and the rest are re-weighted in proportion rather than being scored zero or held at a default. That is the honest treatment of a missing feed, but it has a consequence worth stating: a dropped component does not leave the index neutral, it increases the influence of every component that remains. An index computed without crude, for example, gives more weight to the two editorially assessed components than the published weights suggest.

A correction, 29 July 2026, which puts a visible step in the index history. Until this date the crude component was excluded whenever its latest observation was more than five days old. That test was borrowed from a display label and was wrong for the underlying data: the Brent spot series we read is a daily series that is published weekly, so its newest observation is routinely eight or nine days old by the end of each cycle through no fault of the feed. The effect was that crude was dropped from the index on most days, and the remaining components were silently re-weighted upward. The test is now whether the data pipeline itself is still running, which is the question that was always meant to be asked. The index is more stable and slightly different from this date onward; earlier values in the history are not restated, because the figures published at the time are what readers saw.

Calculated from official data

Last updated: Reviewed when the crisis model changes Source: Health index engine (6-component weighted model)

How the inbound supply score is computed

The inbound supply component has two paths, depending on whether a live tanker feed is connected.

Live path, when a tanker feed is present: the score rises with the number of inbound tankers confirmed on the window and saturates at a healthy ceiling once enough vessels are in transit. The live path is deliberately simple because tanker counts are noisy on short windows.
Editorial fallback, when no live feed is available: an editorially maintained score stands in, benchmarked against the pre-crisis arrival cadence and reviewed against port authority notices, AIS tracking commentary, and AIP weekly reports.
Why the two paths do not always reconcile: the live and editorial paths benchmark against different baselines, so the fallback is an expert judgement rather than a direct ratio of the live count. Aligning both on a single pre-crisis baseline is tracked as a follow-up.

Editorial assessment

Last updated: Reviewed monthly Source: Port authority notices, AIS commentary, AIP weekly reports

How the price stress score is calibrated

The price stress component converts the national average retail ULP price into a 0 to 100 score on a linear scale between two anchors: a pre-crisis baseline and a sustained-crisis ceiling. It is clamped to the 0 to 100 band, so a price at or below the baseline reads as no stress and a price at or above the ceiling reads as maximum stress.

Baseline: the national average ULP retail price across the months before the 28 February 2026 Hormuz crisis. A reading at the baseline maps to the top of the score.
Crisis ceiling: calibrated against the March 2026 peaks on the national average feed. A reading at or above the ceiling maps to the bottom of the score; the span between the two anchors sets the gradient.

If the national average settles into a sustained new normal, the anchors are recalibrated so the score continues to discriminate. The current anchors are fit for crisis forecasting, not structural post-crisis pricing.

Calculated from official data

Last updated: Calibrated Feb 2026 Source: National average ULP retail price, health index engine

How the reserve score is derived from days of cover

The reserves component converts the average days of cover across petrol, diesel, and jet fuel into a 0 to 100 score using a piecewise-linear curve. The curve is steepest in the critical band and flattens as cover approaches the IEA target.

A structural note: the curve tops out at the IEA 90-day net-import target, and Australia holds well below 90 days (it has for years). So this component is structurally capped below 100, and that caps the overall index too. Read the score as movement within Australia's normal range, not as distance from a perfect 100.

Critical band (lowest days of cover): weighted most steeply, because every day lost in a critical-cover regime has outsized market, policy, and psychological impact. The band is anchored near the blended level of the per-importer Minimum Stockholding Obligation (petrol 27, diesel 32, jet 27). The MSO is a holding rule each fuel entity must meet, not a national days-of-cover floor, so it is a reference point for the curve rather than a statutory national target.
Vulnerable band: above the rationing band the country is sub-target but functionally stable. Each additional day still matters, but single-day movements do not reshape the national risk picture.
Approaching-secure band: cover at or above the IEA 90-day net-import target scores at the top. Days beyond 90 clamp to the maximum, because the IEA threshold is the meaningful ceiling for stress assessment.

Minimum Stockholding Obligation relief temporarily eases the per-importer holding requirement during the supply crunch, letting suppliers hold 20 per cent less petrol and diesel if they commit to delivering more fuel into the domestic and regional market. In force since March 2026, the relief was extended on 30 May 2026 for a further three months to 30 September 2026, after which the standard obligation is scheduled to resume.

The curve is continuous at every band boundary. It replaced an earlier straight-line formula that flattened the critical-band steepness operators react to in practice; the change created a one-time step in the composite series, documented in CHANGELOG.md.

Calculated from official data

Last updated: Calibrated April 2026 Source: DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics days-of-cover, health index engine

The geopolitical risk, inbound supply, and refinery output components are Editorial assessment assessments reviewed weekly. The other three are derived from official data sources. Full component-level current scores are on the supply and reserves page.

Trigger thresholds

The four live inputs that drive the homepage banner and hero status tone

Calculated from official data

Four live inputs feed the crisis-banner derivation. Each input has an elevated trigger floor and a crisis trigger floor; when any input crosses its elevated floor the conditional banner appears above the hero, and when any input crosses its crisis floor the banner escalates to crisis red. Trigger states are a separate taxonomy from the five supply-health bands documented above. The numeric thresholds below are imported directly from the live codebase so this published table cannot drift from the live derivation.

Input	Elevated trigger	Crisis trigger	Source
National ULP 91 averagec/L	at or above 200	at or above 220	AIP weekly retail tracking, DCCEEW retail averages
Aggregate fuel reserve daysdays	at or below 45	at or below 30	DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics, weekly
Supply health index0 to 100 composite	at or below 60	at or below 40	Derived (six-component composite, see Supply health index above)
Combined refinery utilisationper cent of nameplate	at or below 60	at or below 50	Editorial REFINERY_UTILISATION constant, monthly review

National ULP 91 average: Both anchors reflect post-excise-relief comparables. The 220 c/L crisis floor sits below the March 2026 peak; the 200 c/L elevated floor catches sustained pressure before it reaches crisis-level pricing.
Aggregate fuel reserve days: Weighted across petrol, diesel, and jet. The IEA obligation is 90 days; 45 is elevated and 30 is crisis. Reserve days below 30 are the threshold at which the Minimum Stockholding Obligation becomes binding for individual fuel entities.
Supply health index: The index combines retail price stress, reserve days, refinery output, geopolitical pressure, inbound supply, and the chokepoint score. The trigger floors mirror the published band cutoffs: 60 is the floor of the Adequate band, 40 is the floor of the Tight band.
Combined refinery utilisation: Australia has only two refineries (Lytton in Brisbane, Geelong in Victoria) so utilisation can swing sharply on a single-site outage. The 50 per cent crisis floor reflects what would happen if either site fully tripped offline; 60 per cent elevated catches sustained underperformance at both sites.

The hero status row reads as Crisis when any crisis trigger is active, Elevated when any elevated trigger is active and no crisis trigger is active, Stable when all four inputs are confirmed below their elevated thresholds, and Data pending when any input is unavailable. The Stable claim requires every feed to have confirmed an in-band reading; a single missing feed routes the hero to Data pending and lists which feeds are absent. Tone, icon, title, and detail text all regenerate automatically; no manual string edits are required when the live feeds move.

Calculated from official data

Last updated: Reviewed when trigger thresholds change Source: Trigger threshold configuration (live codebase)

Questions about our methodology?

Stay updated on how we build this

We will notify you when we add new government data sources, refine our calculations, or issue corrections. Full transparency, no surprises. For specific verification requests, email info@fuelcrisis.com.au.

Email alerts are launching soon. Check back shortly.

For developers: the internal codebase identifiers behind each formula and data source are documented in docs/ABOUT-DATA.md on GitHub.

Score

Band

0 to 20

Critical

21 to 40

Strained

41 to 60

Tight

61 to 80

Adequate

81 to 100

Secure

Input

Elevated trigger

Crisis trigger

Source

National ULP 91 averagec/L

at or above 200

at or above 220

AIP weekly retail tracking, DCCEEW retail averages

Aggregate fuel reserve daysdays

at or below 45

at or below 30

DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics, weekly

Supply health index0 to 100 composite

at or below 60

at or below 40

Derived (six-component composite, see Supply health index above)

Combined refinery utilisationper cent of nameplate

at or below 60

at or below 50

Editorial REFINERY_UTILISATION constant, monthly review