Track Australia’s fuel prices, service station outages and shipments in charts

Australia is facing a fuel disruption linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with hundreds of stations running dry, prices elevated and at least six fuel shipments already cancelled or deferred. The article’s charts show outages spiking in New South Wales and Victoria on 30-31 March, while tanker traffic through Hormuz collapsed in early March; before the war, about one-fifth of global oil and one-third of fertilisers moved through the strait. The federal government has responded by releasing fuel reserves, cutting fuel excise taxes and lowering minimum stockholding requirements for firms. Despite the shock, Australia’s fuel reserves as of early April were reported to have increased versus prewar levels in days-of-cover terms, but experts expect further shipment delays and cancellations. For precious metals, the key read-through is higher near-term inflation pressure and stronger geopolitical risk premium, both supportive for gold as a hedge if the energy shock persists.