Clare Petrol Climbs 17 Cents as South Australia's Price Cycle Turns Upward
Drivers filling up around the Clare Valley copped a surprise this week. Unleaded in Clare sat at 183.7 cents a litre seven days ago. By 8:05am AEST this morning, Monday 25th May 2026, the average across the town's five servos had climbed to 201.2 cents. That is a rise of 17.5 cents a litre, the kind of jump you feel the moment the pump clicks over.
Here's what's really going on. South Australia has quietly started turning the dial back up on petrol, and Clare is one of the first towns to show it clearly.
The cycle nobody warns you about
Adelaide runs one of the sharpest petrol price cycles in the country. The ACCC has tracked it for years, and unlike a normal market where prices drift with the cost of crude, an Adelaide style cycle works more like a sawtooth. Prices grind down for a couple of weeks as servos undercut each other, then snap back up almost overnight when one of the big retailers blinks first and the rest follow within a day or two.
What most people don't realise is that the cycle is a deliberate pattern of competitive behaviour, not a reaction to global oil prices. Crude barely moved this week. The bowser price in Clare moved 17 cents. That gap is the cycle doing its thing.
Regional towns like Clare sit in an awkward spot. They feel the upswing of the metro cycle, but with fewer servos competing they often miss the deep discounts that Adelaide drivers can chase in the back half of the cycle. The thing is, when the restoration phase hits, smaller towns tend to jump in bigger steps because there is less competition to soften the blow.
Diesel is climbing too
Diesel told a similar story this week. The statewide average across South Australia's 376 monitored servos edged higher over the past few days, climbing back above 232 cents a litre after sitting closer to 222 earlier in the week. If you run a ute, a van or anything that hauls, that creeping rise matters as much as the headline petrol number, and you can watch it on our diesel prices page.
Not everywhere moved the same way, mind you. Down in Mount Gambier, premium 98 actually came off about 14 cents to 201.7. That split matters. A statewide average hides a patchwork of local markets all running on their own clocks. To put this in perspective, the gap between the cheapest and dearest diesel servo in the state right now is more than a dollar a litre.
Where the value still hides
For Adelaide drivers, the industrial fringe is still the best place to hunt. Servos around Wingfield were among the cheapest in the state for diesel this week, sitting near 216 cents while plenty of metro sites pushed well past 230. Worth keeping in mind if your commute takes you anywhere near the northern suburbs.
Adelaide motorists worked the cycle out the hard way years ago, swapping tips about which day was cheapest long before anyone had an app to do it for them. That is genuinely unusual. Most of the world buys petrol at a price that simply tracks crude. Australia's capital cities are among the few places where a predictable weekly rhythm decides what you pay, and South Australia is the textbook example.
The practical upshot for your wallet
If you are in or near Clare, the smart move right now is to fill only what you need and wait for the next downswing rather than topping up at the peak. Use the best time to fill up guide to see where your town sits in the cycle, and check the week on week movement on our price trends page before you commit to a full tank. For the most popular fuel in the country, our unleaded petrol prices tracker shows the cheapest servos near you as they update through the day.
The cycle will turn down again. It always does. The trick is not getting caught filling up on the wrong day. Keep an eye on this space.
