Australia's Fuel Crisis: Empty Stations and Soaring Prices
A customer uses a fuel pump to fill up their car in Melbourne. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Australia is currently grappling with a severe fuel crisis characterized by widespread petrol station outages, volatile pricing, and significant disruptions to oil shipments. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran has severely impacted global supply chains, leading to hundreds of service stations across the country running empty and fuel prices remaining elevated. In response, the federal government has implemented emergency measures including releasing national fuel reserves, cutting fuel excise taxes, and rolling out a comprehensive national fuel security plan.
Tracking the Crisis Through Data
Understanding the full scope of this crisis can be challenging due to the involvement of thousands of independent businesses and multiple government jurisdictions. To provide clarity, we have compiled the latest available data on fuel prices, station outages, and oil tanker deliveries. Examining national averages for both petrol and diesel reveals substantial price increases since the United States and Israel's military actions against Iran began in late February.
Price and availability variations can be extreme, even within relatively small geographic areas. Fuel outages are dynamic rather than static—stations may deplete their supplies and later regain stock as governments and corporations work urgently to address supply chain gaps and release additional fuel reserves.
Mapping the Outages
The map below illustrates the number of fuel outages across Australia on a day-by-day basis. Since data collection began on March 27th, significant spikes in outages were observed in New South Wales and Victoria on March 30th and 31st. The following chart estimates the total number of stations experiencing shortages of at least one type of fuel each day, though this likely represents an undercount due to varying state reporting timelines.
Supply Chain Disruptions
At least six fuel shipments destined for Australia have already been cancelled or deferred, with experts anticipating further delays or cancellations. Another chart displays the total number of "port calls"—stops at Australian ports by tankers carrying fuel and crude oil for refining. While this data doesn't distinguish between imports and exports, it shows a slight decline in tanker arrivals during February and March compared to the previous six years.
The same dataset reveals a complete collapse in tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the initial weeks of March. Prior to the conflict, approximately one-fifth of global oil and one-third of global fertilizer shipments traveled through this critical waterway.
Data Sources and Methodology
Data is sourced daily from government fuel websites and APIs. Average prices for petrol, E10, and diesel are obtained from Motormouth once per day. Some government fuel data updates in real-time, while other sources refresh on a delay or when stations change prices—all displayed dates reflect when data was retrieved.
Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and the Northern Territory explicitly indicate fuel availability in their data. Outages for New South Wales and Tasmania are estimated based on the types of fuels each station typically carries versus current availability. Western Australia's outage data relies on temporary outage dates for individual stations, with historical Fuelwatch data used for March 26th to 30th and estimated similarly to NSW and Tasmania.
Daily total outage counts represent the sum of all data displayed for each date on the map. Tanker data comes from Portwatch at the University of Oxford, utilizing IMF data, and counts port visits by tanker ships for both imports and exports. This information is sourced daily but not updated every day. This page will be regularly updated as the fuel crisis evolves, with significant corrections footnoted in accordance with editorial standards.
