R1 000 bought 49 litres in March. It now buys 37

What the latest CEF data shows

The petrol price South Africa is heading into October with has moved again, and the clearest way to see what it has done is to hold the rand amount still and watch the litres fall.

At March’s inland price of R20.30 a litre, R1 000 bought 49.3 litres of 95 octane petrol. At the current inland price of R26.92, the same R1 000 buys 37.2 litres. Both of those are official gazetted prices.

Central Energy Fund data covering the review period to 11 September shows an under-recovery of R2.29 a litre on 95 octane. If prices were adjusted on that basis, inland 95 would reach R29.21 and R1 000 would buy 34.2 litres.

Nothing is confirmed. The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources announces the official adjustment in the last days of September, and the daily snapshot has moved through the month. Two days ago the same data pointed to an increase of R2.14 and an inland price of R29.06.

What R1 000 of petrol buys now

The litre and distance columns are Southafriworld calculations, dividing R1 000 by each published price and converting at the consumption figure the International Energy Agency uses for the average South African car, 7.4 litres per 100km.

On those numbers, R1 000 of petrol has gone from about 666km of driving in March to roughly 463km if October lands where the data points. That is a loss of about 203km, or roughly four times the 50km between the Johannesburg and Pretoria CBDs, for the same money.

In litres, the same thousand rand has shrunk by about 15 litres, a drop of roughly 30% in seven months.

Coastal motorists lose slightly less. At a projected coastal price of R28.34, R1 000 would buy 35.3 litres, about one litre more than inland.

The petrol price South Africa could see in October

Seven of those eight would be records. The exception is 500ppm diesel, an industrial fuel not used in passenger vehicles, which on current data would land just below its previous high at both inland and coastal prices.

For a 45-litre petrol tank at R30 a litre, a fill would cost R1 350. A diesel bakkie with an 80-litre tank, filled at a station applying a 15% retail margin on the projected wholesale price, would cost close to R2 960.

Why the increase is this big

The pressure is coming from outside South Africa and from the cost of getting fuel here.

Brent crude reached a four-month high of $109 a barrel on Monday, 14 September, and was trading around $107 on Tuesday after Saudi Aramco closed a pipeline following attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi forces. That pipeline is expected to be offline for weeks.

Shipping is the part that rarely appears in coverage. The cost of hiring an oil tanker has passed $1 million a day for the first time on record, according to Bloomberg, roughly R16 million a day, as operators avoid the Strait of Hormuz. That cost sits inside the price of every litre of refined product South Africa imports.

The country imports refined product rather than crude, which is why the pump price has moved further than the barrel price. Frank Blackmore, lead economist at KPMG, has noted that refined fuel products have seen an increase of more than 100% over time while crude has risen around 30%.

The rand has offered no relief. It weakened to R16.31 to the dollar on Monday as oil climbed.

What could still change

For any of these figures to fall, the under-recovery would have to narrow materially in the second half of September, which requires either a sustained drop in oil prices or a stronger rand.

Government relief is not on the table. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told Parliament this month that “permanently offsetting these increases through the budget would ultimately shift the cost to taxpayers” or increase borrowing. The temporary R3 a litre fuel levy cut that ran from April to June cost R17.2 billion in foregone revenue and has not been repeated. Southafriworld reported on that relief and the diesel costs that followed it in its coverage of the April fuel levy changes.

The knock-on is already visible in household budgets, which Southafriworld has tracked through the rising cost of a monthly grocery basket.

Several things remain unresolved. The official October adjustment has not been announced. Published accounts differ slightly on September’s inland 50ppm diesel price, given as both R29.96 and R30.05, and on the previous inland diesel record, given as both R31.38 and R31.88. And no forecast has been published for how long tanker rates will stay at record levels.

The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources announces the official figures in the last days of September, effective at midnight on Tuesday, 6 October.

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