A tank of diesel costs a lot more than a year ago. Who cashed in?

You've probably noticed it at the pump: a tank costs a lot more than a year ago. And the question comes up every time: who gets that money?

Everyone has an answer. "It's the government gorging itself." Or "it's the oil companies". Or "the guy at the gas station". Nobody is going to read the weekly bulletin of the Direction générale de l'énergie et du climat (France's energy and climate directorate) on a Friday night, so the discussion stops there.

Freedom is a number.

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Today, we read the bulletin for you, and we tell you what we found in it.

What it costs today

On Friday, October 16, diesel sold for €2.35 a liter on average in France. Fifty liters, a sedan's tank: €117. The same tank, the week of October 10, 2025: €80. Thirty-seven euros more for the same thing in the same tank. E10 gasoline fares a little better, at €84 last year and €107 today.

Opening the tank

Before talking about the increase, let's look at what a tank contains: what goes to the oil, what goes to the government.

Two numbers to remember. On a tank of diesel, 43% goes to taxes. On E10 gasoline, 48%.

The product covers everything that comes before tax: the crude oil, its refining (turning it into fuel), transport to the depot and then to the station, and the station's margin. The excise duty (the TICPE, as it's still called) is a per-liter tax: 60.75 cents on diesel, 67.02 on E10 gasoline. VAT, at 20%, comes last and applies to the whole, excise included. So you pay a tax on a tax.

The tax that doesn't move

Here's the detail that changes the discussion. The excise duty is set per liter. Whether diesel is worth €1 or €3 before tax, it stays at 60.75 cents. When the barrel of oil soars, it doesn't swell with it. VAT does follow, since it takes 20% of everything that gets added.

So let's redo the calculation, but on the increase itself: where do the extra €37 come from?

Of the €37 increase in a tank of diesel, €31 comes from the product itself. The remaining €6 is VAT taking its 20% along the way. For gasoline, €20 against 4. More than eight euros out of ten of the increase don't go through the government.

And what does the government collect in total? The figures given by the government in September are surprising. According to the Minister for Public Action and Accounts, VAT on fuel has brought in €710 million more than last year since the start of the conflict in the Middle East, in February. But excise revenue fell by €1.1 billion, which puts total tax revenue on fuel down €407 million. Excise follows the liters sold, not the price, and road diesel deliveries are down 7.5% since January.

These figures were announced by the minister and reported by the press: they are not closed accounts. They say only that the increase is not the tax windfall people imagine. The government keeps 43 to 48% of the price of a tank, and that's not new.

Where the money really moved

In the bulletin, the line that exploded is called "international quotation". It's the price of fuel leaving the refinery on the Rotterdam market, the big wholesale market that all of northwest Europe depends on. For diesel: about 52 cents a liter in 2025, 111.5 on October 16. More than double. For E10 gasoline, from 49 to 90.

For diesel, the quotation gained about sixty cents. The excise duty didn't move.

This quotation mixes two things: crude oil, and what the refiner earns by processing it. Which took the most? The gross refining margin, what the refinery has left once the crude is paid for, reached €235 a ton in September according to the ministry, against €150 on average since January. That's 19.7 cents per liter. Even assuming there was none at all last year, which is false, that would be only twenty cents of diesel's sixty. Crude did at least two thirds of the way, and it benefits first those who pull it out of the ground: the producing states and the oil companies.

The remaining third, or less, went to the refiners. On October 15, TotalEnergies published the European refining margin indicator it tracks: $33.2 a barrel in the third quarter, against $13.5 in the second and $8.4 a year earlier. The group expects about $2 billion of additional cash flow from it in its refining-chemicals segment. Be careful, though, about what this indicator is: a market measure, not a profit. What the group really earns depends on its refineries, its contracts, its costs. We'll know on October 29, with the full accounts for the quarter.

And the station?

The ministry isolates a "transport and distribution" line: 22.3 cents per liter for E10 on October 16, 23.3 for diesel. On 50 liters, a little over €11 for everything: the truck, the depot, the wages, the rent, the electricity, and the distributor's margin.

And that line has barely moved. It oscillates between 22 and 27 cents on the ministry's chart since 2025, while the product doubled. Nothing therefore indicates that stations profited from the spike. The bulletin doesn't let us read the share of margin hidden in this line. Worth noting that supermarkets sold about six liters out of ten in 2022, according to the latest industry study we found.

And among the neighbors?

Oil costs roughly the same everywhere. What changes from one border to the next is the taxes.

Among these seven countries, unleaded varies by 22 cents before tax. After tax, the gap rises to 64 cents, from Poland to Germany. In Europe, the record goes to Denmark, at €2.66 a liter of unleaded, ahead of the Netherlands, at €2.46.

So, who benefits from the increase?

• The government, in a sense: it keeps almost half the tank. But it isn't the one that took the increase. A bit more VAT, fewer liters.
• The stations: no visible sign. Their line is stable, around 22 to 27 cents.
• Crude and refining: that's where the price doubled. Crude first, and its producers. The refiners next, with a margin that has risen sharply since the start of the year.

On October 29, TotalEnergies will publish its third-quarter accounts. It will be the first chance to see, line by line, what this period has changed for a major oil group. We'll be watching.