The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) raised retail prices of all five fuel grades with effect from midnight on 30 May 2026, the state oil company announced in a late-night press release. The increase reversed expectations of a price cut and came a day after CPC Managing Director Mayura Neththikumarage said there would be no June revision.

Petrol Octane 92 rose Rs. 24 to Rs. 434 per litre, and Petrol Octane 95 rose Rs. 25 to Rs. 495 per litre. Lanka Auto Diesel went up Rs. 15 to Rs. 407 per litre, while Lanka Super Diesel Euro 4 climbed Rs. 20 to Rs. 478 per litre. Lanka Kerosene increased Rs. 20 to Rs. 285 per litre.

The new prices apply at all Ceypetco filling stations from 12.00 a.m. on 30 May, the corporation said. NewsFirst and Newswire both reported the revision within minutes of the press release.

The hike landed barely 24 hours after Neththikumarage publicly stated CPC would not reduce prices in June and that the routine month-end revision had been brought forward from 31 May because that fell on a Sunday. He cited 89,000 metric tonnes of West Texas Intermediate that arrived 28 May and a 95,000 MT Murban shipment due 31 May. Both cargoes were procured against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s April fuel import bill jumping 149.9 percent year-on-year to USD 886 million — 36 percent of the entire April merchandise import bill.

The fuel-driven trade pressure has also flipped the country’s external position. April’s current account swung to deficit for the first time in 2026 as the import bill widened and tourism and remittance inflows softened.

CPC did not explicitly link the hike to crude prices, freight costs or the rupee’s 5.4 percent year-to-date depreciation. A monthly automatic pricing formula linked to a four-week moving average of import costs remains the government’s nominal benchmark for revisions, but the late-evening announcement breaks from the day-earlier ministerial framing.

EconomyNext, reviewing the cumulative impact in a Sunday analysis, characterised the revision as the fifth pump-price hike since the Middle East escalation began on 28 February — taking retail rates “back to levels last seen during the 2022 economic crisis.” Cumulatively, Auto Diesel is up 47 percent over those three months, Octane 92 up 49 percent and Kerosene up 57 percent. The outlet attributed the pass-through to IMF programme conditionality that bars subsidised utility losses, combined with limited local storage forcing CPC to procure at spot-market premiums.

Update — 31 May: Lanka IOC and Sinopec Energy Lanka brought their pump prices into line with the CPC revision the morning after the hike, Ada Derana and NewsFirst reported. The two private retailers matched CPC on petrol, auto diesel and kerosene to the rupee. Sinopec, however, did not revise its Super Diesel and continues to sell it at Rs. 600 per litre — Rs. 122 above the new CPC Super Diesel price of Rs. 478 and a price the Chinese-owned retailer first set in early April when CPC was holding the line. Lanka IOC followed Sinopec up to Rs. 600 on its own Super Diesel grade, narrowing what had been a three-way private-vs-state split into a state-vs-private divide on the premium grade alone.