New Zealand petrol margins: where your money goes
Every litre of 91 is made of five parts: what the fuel cost to bring into New Zealand, excise duty and levies, the carbon cost of the Emissions Trading Scheme, GST, and a margin for the companies that store, truck and sell it. The margin is the part that comes down to how the fuel companies price. Here's how it has moved, week by week, since 2004. For pump prices and crude oil, see the fuel prices page.
- Cost of importing the fuel183.2c (55%)
- Excise duty and levies77.3c (23%)
- Emissions Trading Scheme12.4c (4%)
- GST43.6c (13%)
- Margin (fuel companies)18.1c (5%)
a litre, week of 25 Sep 2026
Five-year average: 35.0c. Only 7 of the last 261 weeks were lower.
The margin on a litre of 91, since 2004
Cents a litre, weekly. The dashed line is MBIE's trend adjusted for inflation to Q2 2026 prices using Stats NZ's CPI.
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The weekly line jumps around because pump prices take a few weeks to catch up with import costs (see the next chart). MBIE's trend line smooths that out to show the underlying level. The dashed line is the same trend with inflation taken out, so a 2005 margin is shown in today's money: where it rises less steeply than the solid trend, part of the rise is just general inflation.
In today's money (Q2 2026 prices), MBIE's margin trend averaged 22.5c a litre in 2005-2007 and 37.8c over the last three years: +68% after allowing for inflation.
Lower is better for drivers, but the margin has to cover the real cost of storing, trucking and selling fuel, so it can't sit near zero for long. The warning sign is a margin that stays well above its trend for months, even after inflation. That's the pattern the Commerce Commission found in its 2019 fuel market study, which concluded import margins had more than doubled over the previous decade and that drivers were paying more than they would in a properly competitive market.
Import costs vs the margin: why the margin swings
Cents a litre, weekly: what it cost to bring a litre of 91 into New Zealand, and the margin left over.
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Pump prices follow import costs with a lag, in both directions. When import costs jump, the margin gets squeezed until pump prices catch up; when they fall, the margin widens until pump prices come down. If prices come down more slowly than they go up - what economists call 'rockets and feathers' - margins end up higher on average.
The margin's lowest week in MBIE's data was the week of 13 Mar 2026, at -10.1c a litre. Over the eight weeks before it, the cost of importing a litre went from 88.5c to 167.6c.
For drivers, the ideal is pump prices that follow import costs at the same speed both up and down, so the margin stays steady instead of widening every time costs fall.
What this means
- The margin is what's left of the pump price after taking out the cost of importing the fuel, excise duty and other levies, the Emissions Trading Scheme's carbon cost and GST.
- It pays for everything after the fuel lands in New Zealand: storage, trucking, running service stations (staff, rent, card fees) and profit, for importers and retailers together. MBIE can't split it between them.
- It isn't profit. Costs come out of it, and it can briefly go negative when import costs spike faster than pump prices.
- In September 2026 MBIE added a 'fuel market adjustment' from 27 February 2026 for extra costs importers faced during the Middle East conflict, identified by the Commerce Commission. It raised the import-cost figures from that date, which lowered the margin.
All fuel figures are MBIE's weekly fuel price monitoring for regular 91 petrol (CC BY 4.0), using the average price actually paid after discounts. The most recent weeks are provisional and can be revised. "Today's money" uses Stats NZ's CPI, latest quarter Q2 2026; weeks after that quarter aren't adjusted.