Petrol is falling, jet fuel is still tight, and the Strait of Hormuz keeps changing its mind. This is how I plan a summer around a market that refuses to sit still.
News · Energy · Travel
Let me guess how this went in your house. Somebody said we should book something. Somebody else said, ‘Look what happens with the flights first’. Nothing was booked, and the good dates went to a more decisive family.
I know, because that was my house.
What has actually happened to fuel
The pump has been the visible part. Petrol and diesel both fell between May and June, diesel by close to eleven pence a litre, and that drop did much of the work in pulling UK inflation lower than expected. If your car takes diesel, you will have felt it. If it does not, you experienced this news as a rumour.
Behind the forecourt sits a market that has spent this year behaving like a pinball with opinions. Brent crude spiked violently while the Strait of Hormuz was closed, reaching levels most people watching had not seen in years. When the June understanding between the United States and Iran reopened the strait, the price collapsed back to roughly where it began, as though the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. Then hostilities flared again in July and up it went. The US Energy Information Administration has since cut its forecast for the year, which tells you the official expectation is calm; the tape suggests the market has not been informed.
I made the same point when I wrote about why gold fell during a Middle East war, and it holds here. Markets do not price events. They price surprises. By the time a story reaches your phone, the price has already heard it, formed a view, and moved on to something else.
The jet fuel question, answered honestly
This is the bit that has kept holiday plans in limbo, and the truthful answer is far less thrilling than the headlines promised.
The Department for Transport has been clear that UK airlines were not reporting a shortage, and that cancellations across the spring window ran under 1% of planned departures, which is roughly what any ordinary season produces. The government’s summary of jet fuel and travel plans is worth five minutes if you are holding a booking. Ministers also relaxed slot rules so airlines could consolidate schedules early rather than cancel late, which is sensible policy wearing the dullest available outfit.
What is true is that supply has been tight rather than broken, that some carriers added surcharges while others made a virtue of refusing, and that leisure routes are always first over the side of the lifeboat. Nobody has ever protected the Tuesday flight to Malaga ahead of the transatlantic route, and nobody ever will.
What I am actually doing
Here I will narrate rather than instruct, because your trip is not my trip.
I book accommodation with flexible cancellation even when it costs more, and I treat the difference as the fee for not having to watch the news over breakfast. I buy the travel insurance on the day I book rather than the week I fly, because the cover you want is for whatever happens between deciding and going, not for whatever happens once you are already horizontal beside a pool. I check what my card does abroad before leaving, rather than discovering its personality at a petrol station outside Girona at eleven at night.
The mistake I made this year was smaller and more humiliating. I watched fuel prices fall, mentally spent the saving on the trip, and then watched the price climb back up while I was still congratulating myself. Nothing terrible happened. But I had promoted a mood into a plan, which is exactly the move that catches people out with sums considerably larger than a tank of diesel.
Volatility is the condition, not the event
The instinct when a market swings this hard is to wait for it to settle before doing anything. I understand the instinct intimately. I have obeyed it, and it has charged me for the privilege.
Here is the difficulty. Waiting is itself a position. Every week of holding off is a week of decisions made by default rather than on purpose. The strait did not send a warning before it reopened, or before it closed again. If your plan requires calm to arrive first, you have built it on the one delivery nobody can guarantee.
What you can build instead is something that survives both outcomes. Flexible where flexibility is cheap. Committed where commitment actually buys you something. That is not a travel tip. That is how I try to hold everything, portfolio included.
One last thought before you book
Rest is not a prize for having had a calm year. It is maintenance after a rough one, and this has been a rough one for an awful lot of people. The trip does not need to be extravagant to do its job. It needs to happen.
So book the thing, book it in a way you can change, then stop reading the oil price for a fortnight. Your nervous system will thank you considerably faster than your spreadsheet will.
Shared as observation rather than instruction. Fuel markets, airlines and your own diary are all perfectly capable of surprising the pair of us.
The Jacqueline Brand: knowledge builds confidence, confidence builds wealth. This is editorial commentary for inspiration, not financial or professional advice. Always do your own research. The Collection
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