Questions and answers

What is the Global Fuel Report, and who is it for?

It is one dated file a week that states the condition of the world's fuel supply: what is running, what is broken, what it costs, and what changed in the past seven days. It is read out of official feeds published by governments, grid operators, statistics offices and energy regulators, and every figure carries the name of the source it came from and the date that source published it. The issue of 22 September 2026 runs to twenty-five numbered sections, two status boards and fifteen corridors.

It is for any business whose week depends on fuel: hauliers and van fleets, farms running tractors, dryers and standby generators, cold chain operators where a stoppage is a stock write off, couriers, construction sites running plant and generators, and anyone buying diesel, petrol, gas or power for a business in the European Union or the United Kingdom. It is written for the person who has to make the call on Monday: hold the price, move the contract, fill the tanks, or wait a week.

How often does it come out, and when can I read it?

One issue a week. Each issue opens at 07:00 UTC on Friday, and from that moment the whole of it is on your account: the reader view on your dashboard, the dated PDF, and each section as its own file.

Every issue published before it stays on your account too, so you keep the series and can show how a figure moved across months.

What does it cost, and what includes it?

£10 a month on its own. It is also included in every paid ComplianceSME account level, so if you hold a paid level there is nothing further to pay and nothing to switch on.

One subscription covers your account. Every issue you were entitled to read stays available to download, and the price does not change with how much of it you take.

What are the ten numbers?

Ten headline figures on the front of every issue, each with the move on the week, an arrow, the source that set it and the date that source published it. They are chosen so a reader with one minute still knows the week.

In the issue of 22 September 2026 they were the United Kingdom mean diesel and petrol pump prices, the Brent and Dubai crude reference prices, vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz, the status of the Petroline crude pipeline to Yanbu, European Union gas storage, the member state with the fewest days of oil cover, the A26 service area mean diesel price, and United States distillate stocks.

The ten are on the open issue page, free to read without an account, and they are searchable there.

What is a corridor, and how do I find mine?

A corridor is a route the report prices or counts every week against a fixed January 2025 baseline, so the change is measured and not remembered. Each line gives the baseline, this week's figure, the change on the baseline, and the source.

There are fifteen. Six are at sea: the Cape of Good Hope, the Panama Canal, the Malacca Strait, Bab el-Mandeb, Hormuz and the Suez Canal. Nine are on the road, in Australia, Austria, France twice, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom twice, each read station by station from that country's own fuel price feed.

To find yours, type the road number, the country or the strait into the search box on the issue page, or open the corridor block from the contents column.

How do I find my country?

Every issue carries a country page of thirty rows: the twenty-seven European Union member states with the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland. Four cells a country: days of oil cover with the month Eurostat published it, gas storage as a percentage of capacity, the diesel price this week, and the move on the previous week. A cell no source filled reads NO READ.

Beyond that page, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the European Union, the United States, Asia, the Middle East and Gulf, and Africa and Latin America each have a numbered section of their own, with the figures in full and their sources.

Which fuels are in it?

Road diesel and petrol are in every issue, by country and station by station along the corridors. Jet fuel is carried as the global average price with its move on the week. Marine fuels are carried as Singapore bunker sales by grade, low sulphur fuel oil, marine fuel oil, marine gas oil and LNG among them. LPG is carried as the motor fuel price without taxes for the main European markets and for Korea. Natural gas is carried as storage, physical pipeline flows and terminal inventory. Electricity is carried as the day-ahead price for ten European zones.

A feed that did not answer in a given week is named in that issue, in the block headed what this issue could not see.

What is the exchange rate row for, and how do the forward lines work?

Each figure is printed in the currency its source published it in, because converting it would put our arithmetic between you and the source. One exchange rate row then lets you set two countries side by side: the European Central Bank euro reference rates, the date and the hour they were set, and every cross worked from them.

A forward line is a different thing and it is marked as one. It is a reading of the next seven days, running to the close of trade on the date the issue names. The next issue scores each forward line against what happened, in the back test.

What is in the regulatory calendar?

One dated section of what changes and when for fuel, each line naming the instrument and the date, so you can see what lands inside your own planning window.

It carries ETS2, which brings road transport and buildings fuel under a carbon price on 1 January 2028 and has required monitoring and reporting since 1 January 2025; the UK ETS, which took domestic shipping in on 1 July 2026; CBAM, whose definitive regime started on 1 January 2026, with the United Kingdom scheme from 1 January 2027; RED III and its transposition deadline of 21 May 2025; the RTFO obligation periods, 14.552 per cent for 2026 and 15.056 per cent for 2027; and FuelEU Maritime with its verification and document dates.

The duty dates are there too: fuel duty held at 52.95 pence a litre on 15 June 2026, the temporary cut running to 31 December 2026, and the legislative default that lifts the rate on 1 January 2027.

What are the status boards, and what does NO READ THIS WEEK mean?

Two boards, refineries and pipelines, carrying every asset the build follows as one coloured block with the asset name and its state. The states are WORKING, REDUCED, BLOWN UP NOT OPERATIONAL, BLOWN UP GONE, CLOSED, MAINTENANCE and NO READ. Every block below WORKING carries a return line, giving what the source has stated about the return.

NO READ means no source the report reads published anything about that asset inside the reporting week. Where a prior confirmed reading exists, the block shows that state in a lighter shade with the date it was last confirmed and how old it is. Alerts fire on a reading taken inside the reporting week.

What is the satellite heat reading?

Some sites carry a heat reading taken from NASA FIRMS active fire detections, read over the five days to the issue date within a stated radius of the site. It can confirm that a site is working when no operator statement exists, and it prints the count of detections and the peak intensity it read.

What do HIGH, MEDIUM and LOW mean?

One confidence word a row, computed from the tier of the source and the date it published. The rule is printed on the cover of every issue.

HIGH is a first tier reading from the source that sets the figure, dated inside the reporting week. MEDIUM is a first or second tier reading dated outside the reporting week, or arithmetic on rows that are themselves HIGH. LOW is a third or fourth tier reading, a monthly or slower series standing in for a weekly one, or any row carrying a stated estimate. A row with no figure carries no confidence word.

What is the back test?

One section that takes the calls the previous issue made and scores them against this week's outturn, line by line. Each line says what was called and what landed, and each alert says whether it held or changed.

In the issue of 22 September 2026, thirteen calls were scored and twelve held or landed as called. The section is there so the report can be judged on its record.

What does 'what this issue could not see' mean?

Every issue carries a block naming what could not be read that week, feed by feed, with the reason for each.

In the issue of 22 September 2026, seven feeds were named there, among them the OPEC monthly report, China Customs import statistics and the Baltic Exchange, each because the site refused an automated read. That block is on the open issue page as well as in the full report, and it is searchable on both.

How do I download one section, or the whole report?

Open the issue and use the contents column. One button takes the whole report as a dated PDF. One button a section takes that section on its own, as its own PDF, watermarked and carrying the same source line as every other page.

The contents also states how many pages each section runs to, so you know the size of the eighty-three page refinery board before you take it. On a narrow screen the same list becomes one select and one button.

What does the licence let me do?

You may quote it, forward it, print it, put it in a report of your own and publish it, in whole or in part, for any purpose including a commercial one, on one condition: the line at the foot of the page stays with the part you use, so the figure keeps its source.

You may not present it as your own work, and you may not remove or alter that source line. Each copy served to an account also carries a reference derived from that account, which says where a copy came from without publishing anybody's address.

How do I cite it?

The source line at the foot of every page is the citation and it is enough on its own. It names ComplianceSME as the producer, the copyright, the permission the licence grants, and the address of that issue's own page.

Every issue has a fixed public page at compliancesme.com/fuel/ followed by its date, and that address does not change, so a citation made today still resolves later. Quote the figure, the issue date and that line.

Where do the figures come from, and how are they dated?

Every figure is read from a named source and carries the date that source published it, which is often not the date of the issue. Sources are ranked in tiers: a first tier source is the body that sets the figure, and a lower tier is a body reporting what that body set.

Where two named sources disagree, the issue prints both and names them. Aggregator price sites and encyclopedias are excluded from every layer, and the sources section lists every feed the issue was read out of with the count of figures each one gave.

A figure looks wrong. What do I do?

Tell us. The report a problem page and the contact page both reach the same desk.

Send the issue date, the section and the figure as it printed. We read it against the source that row names, and we answer you with what that source says and how the figure was worked.

What can the connector do with the report?

A paid account can connect ComplianceSME to Claude and fetch an issue straight into a conversation, so you can ask questions of the week's figures without leaving what you were doing. The tools list the issues your account may open and return one issue in full as its machine record, with every table as text.

It runs through the same account check as the website: the connector resolves to your account and asks the same gate, so a tool call opens exactly the issues your account may read. Connecting is on your account page.