TL;DR: Five days ago we called the Brisbane cycle peaked at 199.9 c/L — flat three days, pack piled in behind it. It looked like a top. It wasn’t done. The metro ULP median paused at 199.9 over 31 July–1 August, then stepped again to 201.9, 206.4, 208.9, and has sat flat at 209.9 c/L since 5 August. Here’s the important part: the second leg was not the discount cycle climbing higher. It was the floor coming up under it. Wholesale — the Brisbane Terminal Gate Price — jumped from 184.7 on 31 July to 204.7 by 3 August as fuel-excise relief ended on 1 August, and for a day or two retailers were selling below what the barrel now cost them: on 3 August the metro median sat just 1.7 c/L over wholesale, down from a fat 15.2 c/L at the 31 July cycle peak. Retail climbed to 209.9 to catch the floor, not to widen the margin. Two lessons: don’t call a top while the tax is still moving under it, and this trough won’t fall as far as the last, because ~17.6 c/L of excise now sits under every litre.
I have to open by marking my own homework. On 2 August this column looked at three flat days on 199.9, the pack bunched at the round number, and called it: top of the cycle. That was the right read of the cycle — and the wrong read of the week, because something else was about to move underneath it. Here’s what happened, and why the distinction matters for your next fill.
What the feed shows
Every number here is the Queensland Government price feed — what each Brisbane-metro station reported charging — plus the published Brisbane Terminal Gate Price for wholesale. We carry each station’s last known ULP price forward and take the metro median, one number a day.
The median didn’t roll over off 199.9. It stepped up again:
Two flat days at 199.9, then four days of climbing to a fresh flat top at 209.9. If you only watched retail, it looks like the cycle simply peaked higher. It didn’t.
The tell: the floor jumped, and margin collapsed
Here’s the wholesale story the retail line hides. The Brisbane Terminal Gate Price for ULP — what stations pay before they mark up — did this:
- 31 July: 184.7 c/L. Retail median 199.9 — a 15.2 c/L margin over wholesale. That fat margin is the fingerprint of a discount-cycle peak.
- 3 August: 204.7 c/L. Wholesale jumped about 20 cents over the long weekend as fuel-excise relief ended on 1 August — the 16 c/L cut came off and the full indexed rate returned, about 17.6 c/L once GST stacks. Retail that day was 206.4, a margin of just 1.7 c/L. Retailers were selling barely above cost.
- 7 August: 197.7 c/L. Wholesale has eased back a touch; retail sits at 209.9, a 12.2 c/L margin — back to a normal-ish peak spread.
So the move from 199.9 to 209.9 wasn’t greed and it wasn’t the cycle turning up. On 31 July the pack was already at its cycle peak, printing a 15-cent margin. Then the tax stepped, wholesale leapt past what stations were charging, and for a couple of days the margin cratered to under 2 cents — retail hadn’t caught up to the new floor yet. The climb to 209.9 is retail catching the floor, not stretching the top. The cycle already peaked; the excise moved the ground it was standing on.
So what — for your next fill
Three things follow, and they’re all actionable:
- The top is higher now. The metro is parked at 209.9, and the cheap floor moved with it: the 2 August wrap found stations at 178.5; the cheapest in the metro this morning was about 191.5 (a Caltex at Eagleby), with a cluster of independents in the mid-190s. Same rule as ever — the cheap pins are independents, and they’re 15–18 cents under the pack even now.
- Don’t confuse the plateau for the peak. We did, briefly. When wholesale is moving — an excise step, a crude spike — a flat retail stretch can be a landing between steps, not the top. The margin-over-wholesale is the tell: a peak with a fat margin can still get taller if the floor rises under it.
- The next trough won’t be as cheap. This is the one that sticks. About 17.6 c/L of fixed excise now sits under every litre, cycle or no cycle. When this peak finally discounts — and it will — it won’t fall as far as the June trough’s 152.7, because the floor it falls toward is a good 15-plus cents higher than it was a month ago. Time your fill by the cycle; just don’t expect the old bottom.
The play today is unchanged from a peak: if you can reach a cheap independent, do — that’s a $10-plus tank against the 209.9 pack. Pinly Fuel shows every Brisbane station’s current price and its report time from the Queensland Government feed, so you can find the stragglers under the pack instead of paying the top.
One honest limit
The metro median and margins here are the QLD Government feed carried forward daily; wholesale is the published Brisbane TGP, which isn’t quoted on weekends, so the 1–2 August step is bracketed by the 31 July and 3 August prints rather than measured mid-jump. The ~17.6 c/L excise figure is the indexed rate grossed for GST, not a feed measurement. And “the top is 209.9” is a three-day plateau read, not a promise — if wholesale moves again, so might this. The shape, though, is solid: the cycle peaked at 199.9, the tax lifted the floor, and retail climbed to meet it.