From price shock to panic buying: record demand for fuel

For 12 consecutive days in March this year, fuel stations across the country recorded sustained, escalating stop volumes – a pattern without precedent in seven years of continuous tracking by Lightstone Retail.

From 16 to 27 March 2026, diesel volumes exceeded February levels every day, with the first surge peaking at 10 to 12% above the prior week. Instead of stabilising, demand accelerated again, culminating in volumes more than 12% above baseline by 27 March. Petrol followed a similar but less pronounced trajectory, reflecting the structural divide between commercial operators and private motorists.

What’s striking isn’t just the scale of the increase, but its consistency. This is sustained behaviour, not a once-off spike. It reflects a market reacting in real time to rising fuel prices, geopolitical instability and visible pressure at the pump.

“In seven years of tracking this data, we have not seen anything like this,” says Tamaryn Shalom, head of product and innovation at Lightstone Retail. The Iran War triggered a chain of events – media coverage, price signals, visible supply pressure at the pump – that pushed commercial operators and consumers to respond in ways our data has simply not recorded before.”

Diesel demand tells the real story

The divergence between diesel and petrol is revealing. Diesel demand has surged more aggressively because it is driven by logistics operators, fleet managers and commercial users who understand the implications of rising prices better than anyone. These are the actors with storage capacity, procurement strategies and exposure to cost volatility.

The result is a front-loading of demand that places immediate strain on supply chains. When fleets begin filling ahead of anticipated price hikes, the system experiences a compression of demand into a shorter time window, increasing pressure on distribution, storage and forecourt operations.

Private motorists, by contrast, lack both the capacity and the flexibility to respond at scale. Their behaviour is more gradual, but still upward, reinforcing the overall trend.

A national surge, not a localised event

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the data is its uniformity. Every major fuel brand – BP, Engen, Sasol, Shell, Astron Energy and TotalEnergies – recorded diesel increases of between 10 and 20% in the final days of the period. More telling still, all six chains reached their highest diesel volumes on the same day.

The psychology of a price shock

Fuel price increases do not reduce demand in the short term. They change behaviour.

As Mohit Narotam, managing director of Lightstone Retail notes, higher prices do not significantly alter how far South Africans drive. “Total vehicle kilometres have remained broadly stable despite sustained price volatility,” he says. What changes is timing. Consumers and businesses shift when they fill up, concentrating demand into narrow windows ahead of anticipated increases. This creates artificial peaks that strain infrastructure designed for steady flow, not sudden surges.

A system with no margin for error

The fuel network is facing a challenging time. Demand is effectively fixed in aggregate, but its distribution is becoming increasingly uneven and unpredictable. This places enormous pressure on planning, logistics and execution.

Forecourts must be stocked, staffed and supplied precisely where and when demand materialises. Any mismatch – even temporary – risks visible shortages, longer queues and further panic-driven behaviour.

In a system already under pressure from rising fuel costs, global supply disruptions and domestic logistics inefficiencies, the margin for error is vanishingly small.

Lightstone Retail will continue tracking daily stop volumes as the April price adjustment unfolds, but the direction of travel is already clear. South Africa’s fuel network is entering a period of heightened volatility, where demand surges, operational strain and price pressure intersect.

Source: Lightstone Retail Fuel Stop Analysis, 16 to 27 March 2026