00:00London may rely heavily on public transport but the UK's record diesel
00:06price still matters here. The RAC says the question is how far above two pound
00:12a litre the average could climb. The capital depends on vans and lorries to
00:17deliver food, parcels and building materials, carry tools to jobs and keep
00:22businesses supplied. More than 100,000 company-owned diesel vans were
00:27registered in London at the end of 2025 showing just how much commercial
00:32activity still relies on the fuel. As running costs rise firms have to decide
00:38how much they can absorb. The rest can feed into delivery charges, construction
00:43costs and prices for goods and services. What it means is that Londoners do not
00:48need to own a diesel car to feel the effects of high prices. Record diesel can
00:54stretch household budgets through almost everything moved by road. There can be no
00:59doubt that the fact that the fuel prices are going up is primarily due to the
01:03situation caused by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in Iran. Quite clearly
01:09once you have a conflict such as that and the fact that the Straits of
01:13Hormuz, where a lot of they all move through, it's bound to create a supply side
01:17problem. Now there is no end in sight so we expect them to go up. We've also got the
01:22added complication that diesel has gone up fairly dramatically in recent times
01:27caused by the fact that refining processes, which of course diesel
01:31being another sub-product of oil, have been closed down as a result of the
01:35conflict and also allows that the fact that Donald Trump has decreed that
01:39there should be banned to exports from America or the United States to the
01:44rest of the world. So of course this is making the black stuff or the
01:48derivatives of such to be sort of quite a precious commodity. Do I see any end to
01:54this? Well, Trump has promised that the end of the conflict on an occasion so we
01:58can't put much faith in that. We've got the midterms going up, maybe of course that
02:01might sort of give him cause to sort of to think if the consequences of that are
02:05sort of he's voted out of the two houses where the election has been held. Do I see
02:09any sort of upside? I think it's important to recognise, of course, as fuel prices go up
02:13we use less of it so people sort of become sort of more careful in their use but
02:16also of course in the short to medium term though but I think in the longer
02:20term it will sort of underpin the sort of the transition to sort of to net zero but
02:25of course quite clearly the last thing that the government probably would want
02:28is ever to go out and buy electric cars because of course we don't have the sort
02:30of capacity and besides of course electricity prices are also going up so
02:34that's part of the problem. So all in all it demonstrates the sort of the
02:38problem that when we're dependent upon sort of something that comes from oil we
02:41have to pay the sort of the price when it becomes in short supply. Well there is
02:45no firm forecast for where diesel prices will peak but while global supply
02:52remains tight households and businesses could keep paying more through fuel, goods
02:58and services.
