On July 31, the team responsible for deciding fuel prices in the UAE, known as the Fuel Price Committee, will announce the new petrol and diesel prices for August. This decision will be influenced by the current state of fuel prices worldwide.
Let’s take a peek at what’s been happening globally. Over the last few weeks, the cost of oil has been climbing. Why, you ask? A group of countries that produce a lot of the world’s oil decided they would make less of it, reducing the daily output by a whopping 1.6 million barrels until the end of this year.
On top of that, we’ve seen the US economy doing well in the last few months, and there are promising signs in Europe too. These positive updates have given people who invest in oil a lot of confidence that the worldwide economy won’t take a downturn, and as a result, oil prices have continued to soar.
So, how much have oil prices actually risen? Over the past five weeks, the price of crude oil, which is used to make petrol and diesel, has increased each week. In fact, the price has gone up by about $10 in the last month, reaching over $80 a barrel. At the close of last week, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), a type of crude oil, was selling for $80.58 a barrel, and Brent, another type, for $84.99 a barrel.
Now, let’s go back to 2015. This was when the UAE made a big change and started adjusting their retail petrol prices every month to match global rates. So, each month on the last day, the Fuel Price Committee reviews and adjusts the local petrol and diesel prices.
How about July’s prices? For this month, the Committee increased prices by a little bit – five fils per litre. That meant that Super 98 petrol was selling for Dh3 per litre, Special 95 for Dh2.89 per litre, and E-Plus 91 for Dh2.81 per litre.