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The corona crisis is long over at the petrol stations.
The prices fell to 1.129 euros per liter of super in the spring of last year, parallel to the prices for crude oil.
In the meantime, however, these have returned to pre-crisis levels, so Super also costs more than 1.40 euros on average.
And that could just be the beginning - even if a few cents of the surcharge are due to the higher VAT and the CO2 levy since the beginning of the year.
On Thursday, the oil ministers of the OPEC countries and a representative of Russia will meet again in a video conference.
Together they had managed in the past few months to get the price of oil back where it is now.
But there is great disagreement among the lords of black gold as to how things should go on.
One faction wants to cut the production further - this could catapult the oil price into even higher spheres.
The others want to increase production, but this could lead to a similar collapse in the market as it did a year ago.
And above all there is the geostrategic question: How will things continue in the power game between OPEC and Russia on the one hand and the USA on the other?
Source: WORLD infographic
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In April of last year, prices for crude oil had reached a low that had not been thought possible.
The price sank to -37 dollars - if you wanted to sell your oil at the time, you had to pay 37 dollars per barrel (159 liters) for someone to buy it.
Because the camps were full to the top after half the world was in lockdown.
In addition, OPEC and Russia had also quarreled in this situation and could not agree on production cuts.
The negative price was the signal to turn around.
They pulled themselves together again and cut production drastically, a total of around eight million barrels per day, or around eight percent.
This, combined with the hope of an economic recovery, drove the price of oil back above $ 40.
“At the end of 2020, this hope was underpinned once again by the success reports from vaccine development,” explains Carsten Mumm, chief economist at the private bank Donner und Reuschel.
At the beginning of 2021, Saudi Arabia also announced that it would unilaterally cut production by another million barrels a day, and in the USA the new US President Biden launched a gigantic stimulus package of 1.9 trillion dollars.
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And nature also helped the oil producers.
"The cold spell in Texas caused prices to rise significantly again in the short term, because it caused significant production and refinery capacities to fail," says Mumm.
All of this has resulted in a barrel now costing over $ 60 again, as much as it was in February of last year.
But at their conference on Thursday, OPEC and Russia will now decide how to proceed, whether the previous production cuts should be maintained and prices can continue to rise unchecked, or whether the old quotas can be returned to, with the risk of that the price recovery ends abruptly and maybe even the trend reverses.
Source: WORLD infographic
It's about “all or nothing,” as Ipek Ozkardeskaya from broker Swissquote says.
"Either the door will be pushed open for a further price increase towards a range between 75 and 100 dollars, as the analysts of several large banks believe is possible," she says, "or hopes are dashed again."
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It would be worst if both sides could not agree at all, even if they parted in a dispute.
"The last time we saw such a falling out between the two, the price was headed for -40 dollars."
Russia and Saudi Arabia face each other as antipodes.
"Russia seems to want the price recovery to be accompanied by a full return to the old production rates, even if that means lower prices in the short term," says Jon Rigby, an expert on the oil industry at Swiss UBS.
"Saudi Arabia seems to be more focused on the price and is ready to give up some of its production quantities for it."
Source: WORLD infographic
Ultimately, however, there is also a geostrategic question behind it.
Because ultimately the weal and woe of American shale oil producers also depends on the price development.
Because these need a certain price level so that the high investments and funding costs pay off for them.
Before the crisis, they operated around 700 wells in the United States.
That number then dropped to 176, and as oil prices rebounded, it's now back to around 400.
The further the prices rise, the more are likely to be added - which of course in turn increases competition for the traditional oil producers and thus affects the power position of OPEC and Russia in the long term.
Russia seems primarily interested in not giving its US competitors any further market shares.
They prefer lower prices, but promote more themselves.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, seems to prefer higher prices and is also willing to accept that the US competition will expand its position in the long term.
But also for the Europeans a lot depends on the decision on Thursday - and not only because of the gas station prices, which of course affect each individual more or less directly.
Rather, energy prices will ensure that inflation rates will rise significantly overall in the coming months.
This is mainly due to the base effect: in April and May of last year, energy prices hit their lowest point.
Even if they remain at the current level, there will be a significant increase in the coming months compared to the previous year.
"Energy is the main driver of inflation in the coming months," write the economists of the US investment bank Morgan Stanley in a recent analysis.
The premium will be around 0.7 percentage points.
If the oil price were to actually strive towards 100 dollars, then the effect would be even greater, and then even the two percent inflation that the European Central Bank always has as its goal could soon be exceeded.
That would further fuel the fear of inflation on the financial market, which has already risen sharply in the past few weeks, and put a strain on the share prices of many companies.
Then only the oil companies should win - the investment giant Warren Buffett has probably just invested heavily in the US oil company Chevron for a reason.