Diesel Up 10 Cêntimos and Gasoline 95 Up 6.5 Cêntimos at the Pump From Monday — €1.993/L Gasolina and €2.055/L Gasóleo Simples on a Hormuz-Tracking Brent Tape, Portaria 204-B/2026 Adds 1.5 Cêntimos of ISP Discount on Diesel

Drivers in continental Portugal pull up to materially higher pump prices this week. Forecourts are pricing in a 10-cêntimo rise on a litre of gasóleo simples and a 6.5-cêntimo rise on a litre of gasolina 95, taking the national-average reference to €1.993 per litre at the petrol pump and €2.055 per litre at the diesel pump. The move was flagged late last week by Público and Observador, confirmed by the rolling sector forecast on precoscombustiveis.dgeg.gov.pt, and broadly tracks what brokers Galp, BP, Repsol and Cepsa have already loaded into their station systems.

The ISP Cushion

The Government's offsetting move is Portaria 204-B/2026, published 30 April and effective from Monday, 4 May. The portaria revises the temporary ISP — imposto sobre produtos petrolíferos e energéticos — discount schedule for continental Portugal: the diesel discount climbs to €75.48 per 1,000 litres, an addition of about 1.5 cêntimos a litre against the previous schedule, while the gasolina discount holds at €51.97 per 1,000 litres. In headline terms, the Treasury is absorbing about a quarter of the announced diesel rise; the rest is passed through to drivers.

The portaria is the latest in a year-long sequence of weekly ISP recalibrations the Finance Ministry has used to dampen the volatility in international product spreads. The mechanism is nominally extraordinária but has been in continuous use since the 2022 Russia/Ukraine shock; the cumulative fiscal cost runs into the billions of euros against the no-discount counterfactual, and the political read on dropping it has not been worked through.

The Brent Tape

The driver behind the move is on the international screen. Brent crude closed at $114.01 a barrel Thursday — already a level not seen since the early Russia/Ukraine sanctions phase — before the Friday after-hours print pushed through to $126.41 as the Strait of Hormuz closure took fuller effect. Cracking spreads on diesel have widened more than on gasoline, which is why the pump-price split runs 10 / 6.5 cêntimos rather than the usual symmetric move; the same dynamic is showing in the Aviation Kerosene tape we covered yesterday. Trading desks across the Atlantic basin are pricing some persistence into the Hormuz premium rather than treating it as a single-day spike.

What This Means for Expats

• Top up before Monday. The new schedule lands at midnight Sunday/Monday. A 60-litre fill saves approximately €4 on gasolina 95 and €6 on gasóleo if completed Sunday rather than Monday morning at the average forecourt.
• Diesel-heavy household budgets take the bigger hit. Most foreign-resident households on the Lisbon-coast and Algarve still run diesel as the primary daily drive — the 10-cêntimo move feeds through more aggressively to weekly forecourt spend than the gasoline equivalent.
• The ISP discount is fragile. Portaria 204-B/2026 is a weekly instrument. If Brent reverses, the discount is reduced before the pump-price cut is passed through; if Brent rises further, the discount can be raised but the pump price will still climb. Plan around the Brent screen, not the portaria.
• Açores and Madeira diverge. The portaria covers continente only. Forecourt economics in the autonomous regions follow the regional ISP schedule and freight costs, which move on a different cadence.
• If you have a transport-deduction option in your IRS filing, refresh the kilometric records. The fuel-price step affects the implicit benchmark used to calibrate kilometric reimbursement claims — the official reference rate moves quarterly but the underlying cost is set by weeks like this one.