00:00Experts have warned Aussies could be waiting months for petrol and diesel prices to ease
00:05despite a fragile ceasefire in the US conflict with Iran.
00:09It hurts. It hurts the budget that's for sure. I'm just trying to be a bit more careful about
00:14how much we're spending on groceries and maybe allocating a little bit more to the fuel budget.
00:18Yeah. I think I'm going to be driving a bit less than what I was. It's too hard to be
00:23able to afford
00:23it. Before the conflict began on February 28, 2026, unleaded petrol was an average of $1.80
00:31and now it's around $2.50, excluding the discounted cut to the fuel excise.
00:36The ultimate way we can see energy prices come down, I mean fuel energy,
00:41petrol and diesel prices come down, is this war coming to an end.
00:43A temporary ceasefire was agreed on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, on the condition Iran reopened
00:51the Strait of Hormuz. But within 24 hours, officials in Tehran had closed the strait again,
00:57while Israel continued a bombardment on Lebanon. If the ceasefire holds, that doesn't mean
01:05that the world global capacity comes online in a week or a month. It will take a considerable period
01:12of time. The strait is a critical route for fuel bound for Australia, with most Asian refineries
01:19relying on it for exports. Since its closure, oil prices have risen sharply, owing to the uncertainty
01:26and transportation difficulties. Suppliers are now grappling with a bottleneck of tankers through the
01:32Gulf, and a need to navigate Iran's sea mines in the area. There's a lag effect here, where until today,
01:39we've still been running off the fuel that left from the Gulf before the war began. That runs out in
01:46the
01:47next week or so. And even with the ceasefire now in place, which could see 170 million barrels of oil
01:55that's sitting stuck in tankers finally get out and make its way to Australia via refiners in Asia,
02:02that is a six or so week process. So what does this mean for us? Well, it could mean months
02:10before oil
02:11transportation can resume at its previous rate. And if the two week ceasefire holds, that could mean
02:19some relief reaches us probably around May. Even if it was fully opened, the market's still going to put
02:26a lot of risk around that. So you'll see higher shipping costs, higher insurance costs, and a risk
02:32premium put on the oil price, even if there is no disruption that happens. And that's why you can't
02:37unscramble this egg and go back to the way oil markets behaved prior to the war. We are in a
02:42fundamentally different dynamic now. And that's going to last for years and doesn't just stop and
02:48go back to the way it was because the war ends, if it ends.
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