Fuel prices in Ukraine remained largely unchanged during the business week, according to Energy Reform's monitoring of the websites and mobile applications of several filling station chains.
According to the monitoring, compared with the previous survey on August 3, Socar increased the price of both grades of diesel fuel by UAH 1 per liter.
Gasoline prices across all filling station chains have remained unchanged for more than a week.
According to Serhiy Kuyun, director of consulting company A-95, diesel fuel prices are likely to remain stable throughout August.
"As for prices, stability appears to be the most likely scenario. For almost the entire month, the market will be supplied with fuel contracted during the price peak at the end of July. One thing we can say with confidence is that the forecast of UAH 100 per liter has been canceled. For the second time in six months, we have come within one step of reaching that mark but stopped short," he wrote on his Facebook page.
Kuyun explained that on August 5, wholesale diesel prices declined for the first time in the past month. Although wholesale prices remain higher than retail prices, he said that "everything should return to normal within a few days."
According to him, this resulted from a cooling of external markets amid renewed hopes that the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened.
At the same time, he pointed to serious fuel supply problems. In particular, in August, Polish energy group Orlen reduced supply quotas for Ukrainian buyers by 20-30% due to technical issues. In addition, daytime rail traffic has been suspended on certain sections of Poland's railway network because of extreme heat.
Kuyun also drew attention to long queues at Ukraine's western road and rail border crossings, where fuel trucks and tank cars are now competing with grain shipments. In addition, the shallowing of the Danube River has significantly constrained the transportation of petroleum products.
At the same time, Kuyun suggested that a substantial portion of fuel inventories had been destroyed in Russian strikes, as fuel imports in July were 5% higher than a year earlier, while the market nevertheless experienced an acute shortage.
According to Kuyun, the relatively more stable gasoline market is due to weaker price dynamics on international markets, as well as increased small-scale domestic production using excise tax-exempt solvents, including bioethanol.
For his part, Serhiy Sapegin, director of the Psychea Scientific and Technical Center, noted that despite the decline in petroleum product quotations on European trading platforms on August 5, Ukraine's retail market has so far largely maintained the price levels established during the previous round of increases. However, he said that the first positive signals have begun to emerge.
"In the coming days, the decline may become more widespread, as both the domestic wholesale market and import parity are already sending clear signals of lower prices. At the same time, the speed of the retail market's response will depend on inventories purchased at higher prices, further developments in external markets, and competition for consumers," he wrote on his Facebook page.
He emphasized that geopolitical and logistics-related risks remain in place, while a slight weakening of the hryvnia against the U.S. dollar and the euro has added further downward pressure.
According to Sapegin, import parity for A-95 gasoline fell by UAH 5.68 per liter over seven pricing days (as of August 5) to UAH 65.88 per liter, while import parity for diesel fuel declined by UAH 5.32 per liter to UAH 76.46 per liter.
