The method travels
with the number.
Each release records its own method, schema and quality-policy versions.
Custom fuel data packages
Packages retain the eligible price observations matching the fuels, calendar months and brands or stations selected at purchase. Community prices use their observation date in Europe/Dublin; supplier quotations retain their original collection date. The selection is frozen before payment, including the cutoff for a month still in progress.
Pump and delivered prices, fuel grades, currencies, order volumes and tax bases remain separate. Repeated copies of a supplier quotation are counted once; conflicting copies are excluded. Multiple genuine price reports on the same day remain individual observations. Station names and brands describe the metadata captured for the package and are not proof of historical branding.
The workbook includes the underlying rows and descriptive summaries of the selected observations. These summaries are sample averages, not a national market index. The dedicated green-diesel benchmark below uses a separate supplier-balanced method. Missing data stays blank, and no contributor identities or internal database identifiers appear in customer files.
Green diesel: supplier-balanced quotations
The benchmark uses comparable green-diesel quotations for a 1,000-litre delivery in the Republic of Ireland, denominated in EUR. Other volumes, fuels, delivery bases, currencies and incompatible tax bases are excluded.
Each real collection event has an original observation time, supplier and delivery zone. A quote may apply to several counties; that does not create several independent observations. Retained copies preserve their original collection dates. Equal prices in different genuine zones are not automatically duplicates.
The method gives each eligible genuine zone equal weight within its supplier and collection round, then gives each participating supplier equal weight. Eligible collection rounds receive equal weight within a reporting period. This is an observed-quote benchmark, not an official survey, a sales-volume-weighted index or a national transaction price. Zone treatment and eligibility are recorded with each release.
When supplier coverage changes, a matched-supplier comparison describes the change among comparable suppliers alongside the all-supplier figure. It is omitted with an explicit reason when comparable evidence is insufficient.
Reporting dates and cadence
Observation timestamps are stored in UTC. Reporting periods follow the Europe/Dublin calendar: the start is inclusive and the end is exclusive. Completed calendar months are calculated from their eligible underlying rounds, not by averaging overlapping fortnightly reports.
Fortnightly delivery uses a fixed 14-day calendar, independent of a customer’s sign-up date and monthly billing date. The reviewed release and next scheduled delivery are shown before checkout. Collection frequency and report delivery frequency are separate.
Station snapshots
For each station and petrol/diesel grade, the snapshot takes the latest eligible observation at or before the chosen cutoff, inside the displayed bounded lookback window. The cutoff and the start of this station window are both inclusive; lookback days are elapsed 24-hour periods. Each grade keeps its own timestamp. Missing prices stay missing, and future observations are excluded.
The Republic of Ireland/EUR product is kept separate from Northern Ireland/GBP. Geography is established independently of currency. Source price scale must be verified before conversion to EUR per litre. Current station metadata is labelled as current unless dated historical evidence exists.
Community reporting, automated statistical checks, corroboration and manual review have distinct labels. A stored verification flag alone does not establish independent verification.
Freshness, tax and incomplete coverage
Each release discloses distinct suppliers or stations, independent observations, original collection dates, freshness bands, missing areas and exclusions. Minimum-coverage and freshness thresholds are versioned product policy choices, not industry standards. A failed quality gate withholds the normal report or produces an explicitly incomplete outcome under the recorded policy.
Unknown fuel-price tax basis remains unknown. Net or gross values are derived only when a documented source basis and date-effective rate support the calculation. No missing price is replaced with zero. Service-fee VAT treatment is separate from the tax basis of observed fuel prices.
Sources and permitted fields
Supplier quotations and FuelWatch community reports are separate source categories. Public supplier pages and quotation forms may be checked automatically. Public visibility is not an open licence; a source review records an applicable licence or another established lawful basis for the particular collection and use. A source and field permission register classifies material as approved, conditional or withheld. Unresolved rights or measurement basis block the affected product or fields. Earlier aggregates with unresolved provenance are excluded from paid exports.
Files contain only allowlisted business fields. Contributor identities, personal contact details, photographs, IP addresses, usage logs, billing data, credentials and sensitive source URLs are excluded. Removing those fields does not alone guarantee anonymity: observation time, station and price can be matched to other records. A release review must consider that linkage risk.
Where approved OpenStreetMap station metadata is included: Station data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database Licence. Attribution and any applicable upstream rights remain attached to the relevant fields.
Versioned files and corrections
Each immutable release records its period or cutoff, input lineage and digest, method/schema versions, quality result, generation time and output checksums. Corrections create a linked new release with a notice; previous versions are retained. A buyer reviews and purchases a specific release. Availability is revalidated before checkout.
Excel and CSV values are generated by deterministic calculations. Authored workbook formulas are used for the consumption calculator. Untrusted text is sanitized to prevent spreadsheet formula execution.