TL;DR: 239.9 c/L. That is the Brisbane metro median for regular unleaded on 9 October, 1.7 cents under the Brisbane wholesale list price of 241.6. The median has been at or below it on 27 of 957 days since January 2024, so this is rare, and it does not show servos are selling at a loss. The Queensland-wide median is 241.9, level with the Brisbane gate price at 0.3 above; I can’t test regional towns against their own terminals. Diesel is the opposite picture, at 23.7 above its gate price.
“But really the wholesale price forms only a small percentage of the retail. So why do prices jump by almost 15% on a weekly basis.” — ‘kilotango’, Whirlpool
The poster was asking about the weekly cycle, and the first half of that line is the part worth testing. This week the Brisbane wholesale list price is 100.7% of the Brisbane median pump price. On Wednesday, in my post on the G7 diesel release, I noted the unleaded gate price had moved 0.4 above the metro pump median. Nobody handed me a claim to check here. The number raised the question itself: is unleaded in Queensland now selling below wholesale?
What we checked
Two public numbers. The pump side is what stations themselves report to the Queensland Government feed: 439 stations within 30 km of the Brisbane CBD reporting unleaded, 1,588 statewide, taken as a daily median. The wholesale side is the Brisbane terminal gate price, or TGP, published each weekday by the Australian Institute of Petroleum. The latest is Friday 9 October, so that is the like-for-like day.
The TGP is a tax-in figure, which makes the comparison fair. AIP labels it inclusive of GST, and it has moved with excise three times this year. It fell from 230.3 to 205.3 on 1 April, when the excise cut applied. It stepped up on 1 July, when the cut was tapered, and again on 3 August, the first gate price published after relief ended on Saturday 1 August. It is a price at the terminal gate, so it leaves out freight to the servo and the retailer’s own costs. AIP publishes one for seven capitals: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Hobart. The mechanism is the same in each. The pump side of this check is Queensland only, because that is the feed I have.
What the data shows
Brisbane, yes. The metro median was 239.9 on 9 October and the gate price 241.6. The pump is 1.7 under. At the end of that day 248 of 439 metro stations were listing unleaded under the gate price. That count moves by the hour: at midday it was 256.
Queensland, level. The statewide median is 241.9, which is 0.3 above the Brisbane gate price. The usual figure is 13.4 above, so the cushion is thin statewide too. I would not call 0.3 either way. The yardstick is Brisbane’s terminal, and regional Queensland is supplied from terminals AIP does not publish.
How it got here. The gap went negative on Wednesday 7 October, at 0.4 under, and reached 1.7 under on Friday. Between 9 September and 9 October wholesale rose 34.0 cents and the Brisbane pump median rose 30.0. That 4-cent shortfall came off a gap that was already only 2.3 on 9 September, against a usual 15.7. So the cushion was mostly gone before the month started. From 2 to 9 October the gate price went from 233.3 to 241.6, up 8.3, while the pump went from 236.9 to 239.9, up 3.0.
How rare. The Brisbane median has sat at or below the gate price on 27 of 957 days since 1 January 2024, or 2.8%. Five of those are this week, 7 to 11 October (three with a published gate price; the weekend is carried at Friday’s). Thirteen are one run from 29 April to 11 May, which starts two days after the excluded data window ends, so I cannot say how long it had already been going. Four were tax days, 1 to 3 July and 3 August, when excise landed in wholesale overnight. The other five were in February 2025. The last time it was this far under without a tax change was 1 to 10 May, five months ago. Over the whole period the median gap is 15.7 cents; over the past 30 days the median is 5.7.
Diesel. I drive one, so I checked. The Brisbane diesel median is 288.9 against a gate price of 265.2. That is 23.7 above wholesale. Which yardstick you hold that against matters. On Wednesday I used 22.7, the 18-month figure from my post on the two-week lag, and against that 23.7 is 1.0 wide. Against the median of this post’s longer window, 20.5 since January 2024, it is 3.2 wide. Against the past 30 days, where the median gap on this panel is 19.0, it is 4.7 wide. The chart’s 11.2 is the pump rebuilding that gap: on 9 September it had been squeezed to 12.5 (260.5 at the pump against 248.0 at the gate), and it is 23.7 now. Either way it is wider than the 22.6 I called the widest in 90 days on Wednesday, and the widest since 4 June. It is not unusual over the long run: about one day in four since 2024 has been this wide or wider. No Brisbane metro station currently reporting diesel as available is under the diesel gate price.
The verdict
Below the wholesale list price in Brisbane, yes. In Queensland as a whole, level with it, measured against Brisbane’s gate price because that is the only Queensland one published. One plain caution about what that means. The TGP is a published list price, the average of what four wholesalers post for the day. A retailer can buy on contract at a price above or below it, pays freight on top, and may still be selling fuel bought earlier in the week, when the gate price was lower. It was 233.3 on 2 October. I have no data on what any retailer paid. So a negative gap shows the cushion over the list price is gone. It does not show anyone is selling at a loss.
What it means for your next fill
- Unleaded has no cushion. With the pump under the list price, nothing in the gap points to cuts unless wholesale falls first.
- The cycle is not doing the work. A usual Brisbane cycle drops about 45 c/L from peak to trough. The metro median has stayed between 236.9 and 239.9 for 23 days, since 19 September. No discount phase has started, so there is none to time.
- The spread is where the money is. On Sunday 11 October the cheapest tenth of Brisbane stations were at or under 231.5, which is 8.4 under the median: $4.20 on 50 litres. The cheapest at about 12.30pm that day was 225.9, which is 14.0 under the median: $7.00 on 50 litres. Pick your fuel on fill.pinly.com.au and you see the price each station reported to the Queensland Government feed.
- Diesel’s gap is wide. Whether a cut is owed depends on the yardstick. The Brisbane pump gap between diesel and unleaded is 49.0 cents. At wholesale it is 23.6. So about half of the extra a diesel driver pays sits between the gate price and the pump, not in the wholesale price of the fuel. Part of that is unleaded being squeezed this week, not only diesel being wide. Against the 22.7 I used on Wednesday, diesel is 1.0 over, which is no backlog of cuts; against the past 30 days it is 4.7 over. I am not going to let either one win by default. The cheapest metro diesel is 267.5, which is 21.4 under the median: $10.70 on 50 litres, $14.98 on 70.
Honest limits:
- Scope. Pump figures are Queensland only. The statewide comparison is rough, because regional Queensland is supplied from terminals AIP does not publish; Brisbane against Brisbane is the clean one. AIP’s file has no Canberra column. I have not run this check for any other city.
- Timing. No gate price is published on weekends; Monday’s could move the gap either way. Month and week figures compare the exact dates named. The 11 October figures are a part day, pulled at about 12.30pm.
- The gap is not a margin. The 15.7 is a median across cycle phases of pump price minus list price. It holds freight, retailer costs and margin together, and I cannot separate them. The same goes for the 25.4 cents (49.0 minus 23.6) in the diesel bullet: it is the diesel gap of 23.7 minus this week’s unleaded gap of minus 1.7.
- How the days are counted. Weekends and holidays are counted at the last published gate price. On days with a published gate price only, the count is 19 of 684, and the 30-day median is 6.0 across 20 days, not 5.7. As means, those 30-day figures are 4.7 and 4.6. Three of the five February 2025 days are exactly level, 0.0, so strictly below is 24 of 957. The 1 March to 27 April 2026 data gap is excluded, as in my earlier posts. With it in, the count is 28 of 1,015, the unleaded median gap is still 15.7, the statewide figure is 13.5 and the diesel figure 20.4.
- How the stations are counted. The 248 of 439 is each station’s last reported price before midnight on Friday 9 October, the same day as the gate price. No station was at exactly 241.6, so “under” and “at or under” give the same count. The count depends on the cut: 260 at the end of 8 October, 262 at 6am on the 9th, 256 at midday, 248 from 6pm, and 243 at the end of 10 October. At about 12.30pm on 11 October it was 239 of 439, and the same 239 of the 438 stations then marked as having unleaded available.
- The pump panel. Each station’s last reported price is carried forward if it was reported within the 45 days up to the end of that day, and the median is taken across stations. The panel is not filtered on availability. That one rule is used throughout. Under it, three premium diesel listings at Pearl Energy sites, last reported on 25 August at 238.5 and 245.5 and no longer marked available, sat in the diesel panel under the gate price until 8 October and dropped out on 9 October. Those are the stale listings I flagged on Wednesday. A rule counting 45 whole calendar days would keep them one day longer; the median is 288.9 either way. The panel was thinner early on: 233 metro unleaded stations on 1 January 2024, 422 by 15 January 2025, 439 now.
- The floors. Cheapest prices are from the live feed at about 12.30pm on 11 October, stations marked available only, and go out of date within hours. The cheapest-tenth figure of 231.5 is the panel on 11 October; on 9 October it was 230.9. The 225.9 was reported by United Slacks Creek at 8.35am that day. The 267.5 diesel was at 13 stations around Rocklea, Sherwood, Oxley, Acacia Ridge, Willawong, Durack, Coopers Plains, Archerfield and Darra, last reported between 3 and 10 October. A station reports when its price changes, so an older timestamp is not a wrong price, but check before you drive. The diesel line in the body is Brisbane metro only.
- Two diesel yardsticks. The 22.7 is the 18-month median from the lag post; re-run on this panel for that post’s window it is 22.2 across 511 days, a half-cent difference I have not traced, so diesel is 1.0 to 1.5 over on that yardstick and “no backlog” is an inference, not a forecast. The 30-day figure is a median of 19.0 (mean 18.5) on this panel.
- Other posts. Priya’s 23 September post (239.7) and Karen’s 27 September post (238.9) sit within a cent of this panel because of the cut of the day, and the “about 45 c/L” is Dan’s July figure, a median peak-to-trough drop of 46.5 across 12 swings. One day disagrees across posts: Dan’s 7 August post had the Brisbane median at 206.4 on 3 August, 1.7 above the gate price, where this panel has 203.9 against 204.7, which is 0.8 under. The two use different station panels and cuts of the day, so I would not lean on 3 August either way; without it the count is 26 of 957.
- Wholesale sources. Gate prices are from AIP’s weekly file to 9 October. AIP’s notes say the figure is the average of the BP, Ampol, Viva Energy and ExxonMobil terminal gate prices for the day, inclusive of GST. I could not open the ACCC’s pages on wholesale pricing, so “can buy” and “may still be selling” in the verdict are possibilities, not findings.
- The quote. The Whirlpool line comes from our file of driver comments, recorded with the username only. I could not find the thread, so I do not have its title or date. It is an older comment about the weekly cycle, which I first used in my July post on how the oil price reaches the bowser. It is here for the feeling, not as a claim about this week.
- Left out. Regular unleaded (91) and diesel only. I did not check E10, 95 or 98 against their gate prices, or the crude price or the dollar.
— Tom