This analysis covers January 2022 to June 2026. On February 24th, 2022, energy markets stopped pricing energy and started pricing fear. Four years later, the bill is still on the table — in dollars per barrel, in euros per megawatt-hour, in pence per litre.
Four numbers that carried the whole crisis. Two commodities, two countries' forecourts — the same shock, different latencies.
Brent intraday peak · 08.03.2022 · USD/bbl
European gas record · Aug 2022 · USD/MMBtu
UK diesel record · 04.07.2022 · pence/litre
Extra cost per average driver · all of 2022
Sanctions hit, supply chains fractured. Within two weeks oil spiked to $139 and European gas hit an all-time record — then nearly doubled again in August.
Nord Stream flows were cut to 20% capacity, then to zero. Traders bid for molecules that had not left the ground yet. The word 'security of supply' stopped being abstract.
Monthly Brent and European gas (TTF). Switch to the three pre-war years to see the warning that was already on the board.
European gas fell roughly 90% from its August 2022 record by the low of 2025 — without Russia, without panic, but not without cost.
Between 2023 and 2025 the average driver paid less than before the invasion. The bars show average pence per litre versus the Jan–Feb 2022 baseline.
It wasn't a return to peace. It was a pivot to a new, fragile stability.
A new Middle East conflict in 2026 sent prices up again — but this time the blow was asymmetrical. Diesel, the fuel behind freight and logistics, absorbed the shock.
By mid-April 2026 diesel peaked at 192p a litre — just shy of the 2022 record — while petrol stayed near its pre-war level. The gap tells you where the economy actually runs.
Extra cost to the average UK driver across all of 2022 — roughly £11 a month for petrol, £17 for diesel. Behind every percentage point there is a person standing at a pump.
What four years of energy data actually tells us.
Within two weeks of each invasion prices moved; gas peaked at an all-time record in August 2022 — and again (asymmetrically, on diesel) in 2026.
After 2022 the spike faded, but the price level never returned to the pre-war trajectory — gas had already left inflation behind in 2021.
The difference shows up in pence and pounds: £204 extra per driver in 2022, and a diesel gap in 2026 that hit freight and logistics first.
Every number here is monthly or weekly data, averaged, dated and sourced. Where an estimate or a standard threshold was used, the method below says so.
Brent and TTF are monthly averages in USD. UK fuel is GOV.UK weekly pence/litre. The baseline is the Jan–Feb 2022 average; driver cost assumes 25 litres per week.
One series, one method — each analysis turns a policy decision into a number that lands in someone's wallet.
