Pricele #72: Diesel (1 litre) in Israel 🇮🇱

Diesel and petrol leave the same refinery, so the gap between them in any country is almost entirely tax. Much of Europe spent decades taxing diesel more lightly than petrol to favour freight and diesel cars, and has been closing that gap since 2015. Elsewhere the ordering flips: plenty of countries price diesel above petrol because it is the fuel of business rather than of voters.

Of the 49 countries priced for diesel, Israel ranks #4 from the top at $2.65, 1.7× the median of $1.55.

Israel combines high wages with a small, geographically isolated market and heavy reliance on imports, and the cost of living has been a live political issue since the 2011 street protests over the price of cottage cheese. VAT is 18% and applies to food at the full rate, with no reduced band, which is unusual among high-income countries and pushes grocery prices up relative to Europe. Electricity is the counterweight: offshore natural gas discovered in the last fifteen years now generates most of the country's power, and it shows in a household tariff below the European average.

See the full table for diesel in every country or everything priced in Israel.