There has been a jump in prices at Germany's gas stations again.

Diesel has increased in price by 11 cents per liter within a week.

Super petrol also increased significantly, as the ADAC car club announced on Monday.

The reasons for the trend reversal after around a month of falling prices are likely to be the rising oil price and rising demand for diesel and heating oil.

The car club still considers the prices to be significantly too high.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

Diesel cost 2.121 euros per liter on a nationwide daily average on Sunday.

That was 11 cents more than a week earlier.

E10 premium petrol cost 1.933 euros per liter, an increase of 5.4 cents.

Most of the increase came in the second half of the week, after the oil union OPEC plus decided to cut production.

As a result, oil prices rose significantly.

Most recently, fuel prices had risen significantly with the end of the tank discount on September 1st.

Diesel significantly more expensive than Super E10

"Two weeks ago we were still moving in small steps towards normalization with petrol, now the situation has turned around," said ADAC petrol specialist Jürgen Albrecht.

“Since the OPEC decision last week, the price of diesel in particular has risen disproportionately.

Although there are special effects, such as the increasing demand for heating oil and the need of the industry as a gas substitute, this does not explain why the price has jumped so much."

Due to the particularly strong increase in diesel, the fuel is now 18.8 cents more expensive than E10.

That's a record - if you ignore the phase of the temporary tax cut, which was much more severe for petrol than for diesel.

"One shouldn't forget that diesel is actually taxed more than 20 cents lower," emphasizes Albrecht.

Last week it was decided: The world is worried about an energy crisis - and the oil countries are turning off the oil tap.

For the first time since the pandemic, the representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies (OPEC plus) met again physically and not just virtually in Vienna last Wednesday.

Also present was Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

The result was a cut in oil production for the month of November by two million barrels (barrels of 159 liters) per day.

This is the sharpest production cut since spring 2020, when the oil countries responded to the corona pandemic with a cut of 10 million barrels a day.

It remained somewhat unclear to what extent the fact that many oil states are currently producing less than the agreed quotas would actually allow them would affect the effect of the decision.

It was said that Russia would not have to make any cuts, that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq should mainly reduce production.

According to an initial assessment by oil analyst Giovanni Staunovo from UBS, the "effective cuts" should be around 800,000 to 900,000 barrels a day.

At the beginning of September, the oil states had already decided to cut oil production by 100,000 barrels a day in October.

However, the effect on the oil price fizzled out again relatively quickly in view of recession worries.

"Last month's warning shot fell on deaf ears," commented Craig Erlam of trading platform Oanda.

But now the oil states are obviously getting serious.

The analysts at Commerzbank spoke of a "reaction to the sharp fall in prices in recent months".

The oil states were apparently not impressed by the United States' request to turn on the oil tap.

The price of oil then rose sharply, on Friday even the mark of 100 dollars per barrel of North Sea Brent was not far away.

Before the OPEC decision, oil was only $85 a barrel at times.

Now on Monday the price was hovering around $97.

Heating oil is also becoming more expensive

An intriguing question: Is heating oil becoming even more expensive in Germany, as is expected with natural gas for heating and is to be cushioned by political intervention?

Since the OPEC decision, the price has risen again, from around 160 to almost 170 euros per 100 liters, according to the Internet portal Heizoel24, to which 500 oil traders report their prices.

That was still a little below the price peak in August - but significantly more than anything that was ever asked for before the Ukraine war.

Oliver Klapschus, head of the comparison portal, reports that the demand for heating oil probably reached its preliminary seasonal peak in September: "Based on the current level, we expect a volatile sideways trend for the price of heating oil in winter," he said.

"With state aid like with gas,

Heating oil and motor fuels played an important role in the inflation rate in Germany of 10 percent in September.

As can be seen from the figures for North Rhine-Westphalia that have already been published in more detail, the price of heating oil rose by 82.3 percent over the year;

Fuels became 27.5 percent more expensive, including diesel 42.8 percent.

The recently somewhat lower price of crude oil had brought some relief – but the more expensive dollar had partially eaten this up, as Commerzbank chief economist Jörg Krämer calculated.