Europe’s oil bill: EU pays €10bn more per month than in 2025

Euronews Business takes a closer look at how Europe’s petroleum oil import bill has risen amid tensions in the Middle East - and experts do not expect costs to fall in the near future. European countries are paying far more for petroleum oil imports this year, following tensions in the Middle East in February 2026. Consumers are already facing higher petrol and diesel prices. Now, the EU’s import bill shows just how sharply costs have risen. In the second quarter of 2026, the EU spent an average of €27.6 billion a month on petroleum oil imports, up 55.8% from €17.7 billion a month in 2025. But the volume of oil imported barely changed. It rose by just 1.2%, from 36.3 million tonnes a month in 2025 to 36.7 million tonnes. That means the EU paid €9.9 billion more a month. The cost per tonne also rose, from €487 to €750 over the same period, returning to its 2022 peak. Why is the bill rising? The main reason is the rise in crude oil prices. “The monthly average of the Brent crude price in the second quarter of 2026 is 49.5% higher than the monthly average price of 2025 – a $34 per barrel increase,” Prof. Xiaoyi Mu from the University of Dundee told Euronews Business. He noted that in 2025, around 20 million barrels of oil and oil products per day – approximately 20% of global daily consumption – were exported via the Strait of Hormuz. “When nearly 20% of world supply is cut, the price must rise to balance the market,” he said. The cost per tonne tells the story. In the second quarter of 2026, the EU paid €750 for each tonne of imported petroleum oil. That was the second-highest level since 2021, just €2 below the peak recorded in the second quarter of 2022. At the end of 2025, a tonne cost €435. The price rose to €498 in the first quarter of this year before jumping to €750 in the second quarter. Szymon Kardas, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), emphasised that the war between the US, Israel and Iran had disrupted oil production and supplies to global markets, pushing prices higher. “In some weeks, tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz returns to pre-war levels, only to fall again,” he told Euronews Business. Kardas said such disruptions hit the EU hard because it was 90–95% dependent on oil imports from outside the bloc. According to Eurostat, this dependence stood at 96.6% in 2024. Wolfgang Eichhammer, senior expert at the Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy (IEECP), agreed that tensions in the Middle East had the greatest impact, as supplies fell or became less secure. However, he said strong global demand also played a role, with Europe competing for oil with buyers in Asia, notably China. The chart comparing import value and volume shows how the bill rose while the amount of oil imported remained broadly unchanged. In the second quarter of 2026, the EU spent €82.7 billion on petroleum oil imports, up from €50.3 billion a year earlier. Import volumes rose only slightly, from 105.2 million tonnes to 110.2 million tonnes. The same pattern is evident over the past five years. Quarterly import volumes ranged from 105 million to 123 million tonnes, while the bill varied from €38 billion in early 2021 to €91.3 billion in 2022. It then fell to €47.8 billion at the end of 2025 before surging again. Oil accounts for almost all of the rise in the EU’s energy import bill. In the second quarter of 2026, the EU spent €115.6 billion on energy imports, up from €81.4 billion in the same quarter of 2025. Petroleum oils accounted for €32.4 billion of the €34.2 billion increase, or 95%. Spending on other energy products changed little. Gas imports rose by €1.6 billion and coal by €0.4 billion, while LNG imports fell slightly, by €0.2 billion. Drivers pay more at the pump European drivers have felt the impact at the pump. In the first week of January 2026, diesel cost an average of €1.54 a litre across the EU. Prices rose sharply from March, passing €2 a litre later that month and reaching €2.24 at the end of September. This was above the 2022 peak of €2.03. On 19 October, diesel stood at €2.14 a litre, 38% higher than at the start of the year. Petrol followed a similar path. Its price rose from €1.60 a litre in early January to €2.10 at the end of September, also above its 2022 peak of €2.03. It has since fallen slightly to €1.99. Filling a 50-litre diesel tank now costs about €107, up from €77 in January. Impact on households Mu warned that as consumers spent more on filling their tanks, they would have less to spend on other things, such as food and other everyday goods. “I would expect the prices of food, public transport and other everyday goods to increase as diesel is widely used in heavy transport and buses,” he added. Kardas pointed out that the impact would vary across sectors. “Transport, heating, agriculture, and energy-intensive manufacturing will feel an immediate squeeze, passing higher freight, utility, and fossil fuels costs on to end consumers, whereas service-based industries will remain largely insulated,” he said. How long will it last? Experts do not expect oil import costs to fall soon. Asked whether costs would remain high in the coming months, Mu said: “Unfortunately yes, as we don’t see a practical way of ending the conflict.” He also said higher shipping and insurance costs might not yet be fully reflected in the second-quarter bill but could push up costs in the third and fourth quarters. Kardas expected costs linked to the conflict to “persist in the coming months and may well continue into 2027”. Eichhammer is also of the view that there's a high risk of oil prices remaining high or rising further.