LONDON –
The Competition and Markets Authority has told fuel retailers it is stepping up scrutiny of forecourt pricing as wholesale oil costs surge following the US military campaign against Iran, placing thousands of filling stations across the UK “on notice” and pressing the sector for immediate data on revenues, costs and sales. The move accelerates an existing margins review and signals a closer regulatory interface between the new statutory monitoring regime for motor fuel and the government’s recently introduced open‑data fuel price scheme, making fuel costs an early test of the UK’s post‑Brexit consumer‑protection toolkit.
The escalation has direct commercial implications for oil majors, supermarket forecourts and independent forecourt operators: the watchdog said it will require firms to provide underlying revenue, cost and sales information and will analyse how quickly pump prices track changes in wholesale input costs – explicitly testing for “rocket and feather” pricing behaviour, in which prices rise rapidly but fall back more slowly. The intervention follows a sharp pass‑through from global wholesale markets into retail prices and comes while ministers prepare to press industry executives over consumer outcomes and the broader cost‑of‑living impact.
Why the regulator is mobilising
Wholesale oil has spiked during the recent clashes in the Middle East, pushing the international crude benchmark back above $100 a barrel on 12 March 2026. That jump, together with attacks on regional energy infrastructure and a credible threat to interrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, has translated into material increases at the pump and in heating fuels – a development the CMA says could feed into UK inflation and affect household budgets if sustained. For Treasury and Bank of England policymakers, pump prices remain a visible and politically sensitive component of the inflation basket, sharpening pressure on the regulator to demonstrate that markets are working properly.
The CMA told operators it will speed up its review of margins it opened after the conflict began just under a fortnight before 12 March 2026, and that it will require firms to hand over revenue, cost and sales data to support that analysis. The watchdog also said it will publish scrutiny and report on “what’s happening with fuel prices” and call out any concerning conduct. Rachel Reeves warned ministers would not tolerate companies exploiting the crisis to make “excess profits”, and the chancellor has scheduled meetings with fuel industry bosses and energy companies alongside the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, to press industry leaders for a fair outcome for drivers and households ahead of the next set of inflation data.
Regulatory tools now available to the CMA
The CMA’s move is underpinned by recently enacted competition and consumer legislation that adds targeted information‑gathering powers specific to the motor fuel retail market. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 includes provisions enabling the CMA to require information from firms across the distribution, supply and retail chain for petrol and diesel – a statutory basis for the intensified monitoring the authority has announced. In practical terms, that gives the regulator the power to compel data from companies that previously engaged only on a voluntary basis, and to use that information in formal market studies or enforcement work.
Separately, the government’s Fuel Finder open‑data scheme – established under the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025 – is now being used operationally to bring near‑real‑time pump prices into the market. That scheme makes participation mandatory for petrol filling stations and gives the CMA an enforcement role in ensuring data is supplied in the required form and timescale. The government and the appointed data aggregator moved the scheme into live operation in early 2026, and the CMA has published guidance on how it will exercise its enforcement functions under the regulations, positioning Fuel Finder as the backbone of the UK’s retail fuel transparency regime.
The CMA has previously operated a voluntary price data‑sharing stream since August 2023 while statutory arrangements were prepared; that interim scheme covered around 40% of retail sites but represented roughly 65% of fuel sales by volume, reinforcing the argument made by the regulator that full statutory coverage is needed to improve transparency across all forecourts. Officials now view the shift from voluntary to mandatory disclosure as critical if smaller independent operators are to be held to the same standards as supermarkets and oil majors.
“While price increases might be inevitable because of rising wholesale costs, it is important that those increases reflect genuine cost pressures. We will be closely scrutinising and reporting on what’s happening with fuel prices and call out any concerning behaviour.”
– Juliette Enser, the CMA’s executive director for markets
Market mechanics and commercial exposure
The combination of a large weekly swing in crude and the short lead times in the UK retail chain leaves forecourt operators exposed on margins and stock positions. Retail gross margins at the pump are the difference between purchase cost and selling price; in practice, individual site outcomes depend on purchase timing, contractual supplier arrangements, wholesale hedging, and the extent to which convenience retail sales and shop margins can offset fuel margin volatility. For vertically integrated oil groups, the key risk is reputational as much as financial, given political scrutiny of group‑wide profits.
Figures published by motoring analysts show rapid retail moves since the recent escalation: average petrol prices climbed by 5.5% (about 7p per litre) and diesel by 11.1% (nearly 16p) over the roughly two‑week period following the onset of air strikes on Iranian targets. Those retail shifts are precisely the sort the CMA has said it will scrutinise for asymmetric pass‑through. The authority has signalled it will test not only the level of margins but the timing of price adjustments on the way up and down, looking at whether firms trim prices promptly when wholesale costs ease or hold on to gains in a way that could be characterised as excess profiteering. (These percentage changes were drawn from vehicle association data released on 12 March 2026.)
Compliance, reporting and immediate industry tasks
Under the statutory Fuel Finder arrangements, petrol filling stations are required to register with the appointed aggregator and to update posted pump prices within a defined interval after any change; the system is designed to feed third‑party apps, sat‑nav providers and other services with open‑format price data so drivers can compare station‑by‑station pricing in real time. The CMA’s December 2025 enforcement guidance sets out how the authority will prioritise supporting compliance initially and move to enforcement where firms fail to meet statutory obligations. Industry guidance published in the registration window sets out registration steps and the technical reporting routes available to forecourt operators, from automated API feeds to manual portal updates.
The immediate compliance challenge for larger groups and independent operators alike is practical: ensuring registration is complete, technical feeds (API, portal or other approved methods) are in place, and internal controls reliably update prices within the statutory window. For boards, the new regime raises governance expectations: directors are now expected to be able to evidence that pricing, data reporting and margin‑setting are subject to formal oversight and audit. The CMA’s statutory information powers mean the authority can now require commercially sensitive cost and sales data from a broad set of market participants to support its monitoring – a step beyond the voluntary exchanges used in the interim monitoring period and one that increases potential exposure in any subsequent enforcement case.
Precedent and enforcement posture
The CMA has previously raised concerns about elevated retail fuel margins: late in 2025 the authority warned that margins remained “far above historic levels” and said it was “deeply concerned” at signs some retailers were overcharging motorists. That context explains why the regulator has been prepared to shift from voluntary monitoring to compulsory information requests and why ministers have supported a statutory Fuel Finder and a strengthened monitoring remit. The CMA’s published monitoring updates and the Fuel Finder enforcement guidance together form the playbook the authority intends to follow as it tests pricing behaviour in a period of elevated wholesale volatility.
The government has also signalled it will put industry leaders on notice: ministers will meet senior executives from fuel retailers and energy firms to press for pricing restraint and transparency as supply‑side pressures feed through to retail bills. Political pressure – combined with the new statutory reporting and monitoring architecture – raises the prospect of swifter investigatory steps if the CMA identifies margins that cannot be reconciled with genuine cost movements, including the potential for a formal market investigation reference or targeted enforcement under consumer‑protection rules.
The CMA has stated it will analyse the speed of price increases and the pace of subsequent price falls to identify any rocket‑and‑feather dynamics, and it has set out that firms will be required to supply revenue, costs and sales data to support that work. The Fuel Finder statutory regime and the CMA’s information‑gathering powers are now in place to underpin that analysis, and the regulator’s published guidance confirms an initial compliance‑first stance before moving to formal enforcement where necessary. For retailers, the combination of granular price data and compelled cost information means that pricing decisions taken in the coming weeks are likely to be revisited in forensic detail if the regulator decides to escalate.
The CMA has accelerated its margin review, directed that firms provide revenue, cost and sales data to support that work, and will use the statutory Fuel Finder dataset alongside information obtained under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 to test retail pricing dynamics. The authority has also published enforcement guidance for the Fuel Finder regime and is initially focusing on securing compliance before escalating to enforcement, but officials are making clear that the current oil shock will be a benchmark case for how the UK’s new competition and consumer regime operates in practice.
