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Cheap petrol stations across South East Queensland recorded a sharp surge in customer numbers on Monday as escalating conflict in the Middle East raised fears of a sustained rise in global oil prices, with Pearl Energy Deagon among the hardest hit sites after a queue of traffic formed outside the station where unleaded petrol was selling for $1.63 per litre.

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Pearl Energy Deagon manager Manthan Patel confirmed the station served approximately 980 customers on Monday morning alone, compared to its usual daily average of 600 to 700. Sunday night brought 390 customers through the bowsers, nearly triple the normal evening count of around 130. Patel said customers were filling up as much as they could and were talking openly about the conflict in the Middle East as the reason for their urgency.

The spike at Deagon formed part of a broader pattern across Brisbane, Logan and Ipswich, where fuel stations reported significantly elevated customer volumes across the same period.

What Is Driving the Global Price Pressure

Escalating conflict in the Middle East has disrupted oil and gas production and shipping across the region in ways that directly affect global fuel supply. Strikes and retaliatory attacks have prompted precautionary shutdowns at several major energy facilities.

Qatar has halted production at a liquefied natural gas plant following drone attacks, removing approximately 20 per cent of global LNG supply from the market. Saudi Arabia shut down its largest domestic oil refinery at Ras Tanura, with a capacity of 550,000 barrels per day, after intercepting drones targeting the facility. Iraqi Kurdistan, which exported 200,000 barrels per day via pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port in February, has seen multiple energy companies halt output as a precaution.

Most significantly, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a near halt. The strait carries approximately one fifth of global oil supply each day, around 20 million barrels. Insurance companies have cancelled war risk coverage for vessels in the Gulf, at least four tankers have been damaged, two seafarers have been killed and 150 ships are stranded in the region. Oil prices surged as much as 13 per cent in a single trading session to above US$82 a barrel, the highest since January 2025. Benchmark European wholesale gas prices have soared by almost 50 per cent.

How South East Queensland Stations Have Been Affected

Beyond Pearl Energy Deagon, multiple South East Queensland fuel stations reported a significant surge in demand on Monday. At Liberty Oil Grange on Brisbane’s northside, where unleaded petrol was priced at $1.87 per litre, senior customer representative Thabitha Ayyala said the station processed 360 customers in just five hours, a count that normally takes seven hours to reach, and had served 900 customers the previous Sunday. Lines of traffic also formed at Costco North Lakes and Liberty Oil at Lawnton on Brisbane’s northside.

At OOM Energy Kingston in Logan, where unleaded petrol was $1.69 per litre, manager Tev Ve said around 500 to 600 customers had come through. At Metco Silkstone in Ipswich, where unleaded petrol sat at $1.67 per litre, employee Syed Zahid reported more than 800 customers through the station with 260 arriving in the final hour alone.

What RACQ Says About Prices at the Bowser

RACQ principal economy and affordability specialist Dr Ian Jeffreys said the global oil price movement had already begun pushing prices higher but that Queensland motorists should not expect a sudden jump at the bowser in the immediate term. Due to the structure of South East Queensland’s fuel price cycle, any impact from current global movements is likely to be hidden until the next low point in the cycle, at which point changes will become clearer. Jeffreys said there was no need to panic buy and that RACQ was monitoring local fuel prices closely to ensure retailers did not take advantage of the situation through unjustified price increases.

Australia currently holds approximately 36 days of petrol reserves, 34 days of diesel and 32 days of jet fuel, including fuel held domestically and on ships within Australia’s exclusive economic zone.

Motorists wanting to find the lowest local fuel prices can use the RACQ Fuel and Deals app or Petrol Spy to monitor and compare prices across stations in real time.

Why This Matters for Sandgate and Deagon Residents

Pearl Energy Deagon is one of the most affordable petrol stations on Brisbane’s northside and serves a broad catchment of residents from Sandgate, Deagon, Brighton, Bracken Ridge and surrounding suburbs. The station’s $1.63 per litre unleaded price on Monday represented a significant discount compared to stations further south, explaining both the volume of local customers and the draw from neighbouring suburbs.

For households in Sandgate and Deagon, where many residents commute by car to employment centres across Brisbane’s north, sustained increases in fuel prices represent a direct cost of living pressure. The advice from RACQ to use price monitoring apps rather than panic buy is particularly relevant for northside residents, who have access to several competitively priced stations and are well positioned to time their fuel purchases at the low point of the local pricing cycle.

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Published 3-March-2026.