Diesel is now averaging more than 245.6 cents per litre Australia-wide — the highest terminal gate price since the Russia-Ukraine War drove Australian bowsers above 230 cents per litre in 2022 — as Middle East conflict continues to choke crude supply through the Strait of Hormuz. That is according to Forest & Wood Products Australia, which warned that freight operators and logging contractors responsible for hauling timbers used in framing and pallets are being squeezed by global crude markets with no room to absorb the difference.
After the pandemic supply disruptions of 2020 and 2021, and then the Russia-Ukraine War peak of mid-2022, Australian fuel markets spent two years clawing back to stability — with diesel settling into a 160-to-180-cent-per-litre corridor through late 2024 and into 2025. Singapore Gasoil 10 parts per million sulphur — the international benchmark driving Australian diesel prices — is now tracking at 160.6 cents per litre equivalent, with Brent crude sitting at 87.9 Australian cents per litre as of the week ending March 15.
It comes as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — directed by Jim Chalmers, federal treasurer, to begin weekly fuel price monitoring from January 2026 following a ministerial intervention in December — confirmed prices had risen sharply in recent weeks, influenced directly by the conflict.
And the costs are not falling evenly between cities and the regions. Last week, Wood Central reported that NSW timber hauler Denis Greensill — who moves between 5,000 and 10,000 cubic metres of hardwood every month across more than 35 trucks — has already quantified the damage:
“I need to find $40,000 every week or $200,000 of additional money every month,” Greensill said. “Otherwise it comes out of my bank account, and I go out the door.”
At 43 to 45 cents per kilometre in fuel costs and 50,000 litres consumed weekly across his fleet, Greensill is direct about where those costs land. “It all goes to the end user of the product,” he said. With 86.6 per cent of all domestic forest and forest products freight moving by road, there is no alternative mode to absorb the difference. The Australian Logistics Council puts fuel at between 20 and 30 per cent of total freight operating expenses, and the ACCC has quantified that every cent-per-litre rise adds 0.25 per cent to long-haul freight rates nationally.
And in regional Australia, the problem is worse.
Steve Dobbyns, Executive Chair of Forest and Wood Communities Australia, told Wood Central that operators in rural and regional communities are already paying up to a dollar more per litre than their city counterparts. “With 90 per cent of our population living on just 0.25 per cent of Australia’s land mass, regional communities are feeling the impact of surging fuel prices more acutely than their city cousins,” Dobbyns warned.
“The cost of fuel is up to a dollar higher in regional communities, and they can’t just walk to the shops or catch a train.” Diesel had already broken through $3.39 per litre in Armidale before the latest international movement reached retail bowsers — nearly 50 cents above the price that prompted Parliament to demand answers only days earlier.
Australian Trucking Association CEO Mathew Munro, who lobbied ministers directly as regional supply disruptions emerged, warned that one in every 12 trucking businesses had closed in the 12 months to November 2025. “Trucking businesses cannot be expected to absorb the cost of increased fuel prices,” Munro said.
Responding to pressure, the Albanese government last week released up to 762 million litres of petrol and diesel from domestic reserves — Australia’s contribution to a coordinated 400-million-barrel IEA emergency drawdown, the largest ever recorded. Munro confirmed timber, agricultural, and bulk-haulage corridors had already been affected before that decision was made.
J.P. Morgan has noted that geopolitical disruptions in major oil-producing nations have historically driven average price spikes of 76 per cent from onset to peak. For the contractors moving framing timber across the eastern seaboard, that number is not an abstraction — it is the difference between staying solvent and going out the door.
Please note: This is part of a special series covering the fuel crisis in regional Australia. For more information, click here for Wood Central’s exclusive coverage.
