In the UK, we have four refineries. Between them, they make more than enough petrol to meet our needs, so we sell the rest as export.
However, they don’t make enough diesel, which means we rely on imports. The closure last year of refineries in Grangemouth and Immingham has increased that reliance, meaning we now buy over half of our diesel from overseas.
In addition, the cost of importing diesel has risen because of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Although the UK has stopped buying Russian diesel in response to the war, other countries have carried on, meaning you have “more countries competing for less diesel”, the RAC’s Williams says.
All of this then feeds through to prices at the pump, with diesel costing much more than petrol in the UK and the gap having widened over the last few years.
