Petrol price in Saudi Arabia and other countries

This is an archived report. The latest ranking is available here.

How many litres of petrol can you buy with an average salary in the Middle East and North Africa region and around the world?

Petrol price is dependent on many different factors such as crude oil prices on the international markets or taxes or margins established by gas stations’ owners. The value of 1 litre of petrol at the retail point of sale may change overnight, in some countries even by the hour.

Bearing in mind the fuel market instability, Picodi Analysis Team decided to analyse how many litres of petrol you can buy with the average wage in Saudi Arabia and other MENA countries. For this purpose, we researched the average fuel prices in the first half of 2019 and cross-referenced them with the latest average wages in respective countries. As our study shows, possessing a rich supply of natural resources does not always mean that petrol will be more accessible for an average consumer.

In search of cheaper petrol

In our region, the cheapest petrol can be found in Iran— on average, for one litre of petrol you would have to pay 29 cents (converted from rials). In contrast, filling the tank is the most expensive in Israel where the average price for one litre is $1.78.

The best ratio of petrol price to the average salary in this part of the world can be observed in Qatar and Kuwait, countries where a huge amount of oil is produced. The average wages there are enough to buy 6476 and 5251 litres of liquid gold respectively. The United Arab Emirates, with 4922 litres, takes the third place among the 13 researched countries.

Saudi Arabia (4th place) is a country where you can get 3277 litres of petrol with the average salary. An average Saudi places higher than an average Omani (5th place with 2457 litres) or Israeli (6th place with 1415 litres).

Lower in the ranking are countries like Tunisia or Turkey. In these places, the average salary allows for buying no more than 400 litres of petrol, which is only 6 per cent of the MENA ranking leader’s capacity.

World’s petrol tycoons

In search of the highest indicator illustrating the amount of purchased petrol, we analysed prices and wages in over 100 countries on 6 continents. The first place in the ranking goes to Venezuela where 1 litre of petrol costs $0.000000002. With the average salary amounting to around $29 we could buy… over 14 billions of litres. But do the citizens of a country haunted by crisis and inflation have reasons to triumph?

The actual leaders of the ranking are the previously mentioned Persian Gulf countries. In Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the price of 1 litre is around $0.4–0.6 and with the average salary we can buy there from 4900 to 6500 litres of petrol.

The high positions of countries like the United States and Canada can be explained not only by high salaries but also the amount of extracted oil. Switzerland and Luxembourg stand out with high incomes only.

The lowest amount of petrol can be bought in Madagascar (42 litres), Tajikistan (131 litres) and Zambia (137 litres).

One interesting example is Nigeria. Although it is a country extracting and exporting considerable amounts of oil and with one of the lowest prices per litre ($0.40), the really low average wage amounting to $201 does not allow its citizens for buying a big amount of petrol (501 litres).

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Methodology

This report uses the average net wages according to the latest available data provided by offices for national statistics or relevant ministries. The average prices for the first half of 2019 in over 100 countries are based on data from globalpetrolprices.com and other local sources. In order to obtain the number of litres, we divided the average wage by the average price of 1 litre of petrol. For currency conversion, we used the average exchange rate for the last 90 days.

Public use

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