Amazon is hitting sellers with a fuel and logistics surcharge as the Iran war drags on

Amazon $AMZN will begin charging third-party sellers a 3.5 percent fuel and logistics surcharge on fulfillment fees, the company announced this week, citing elevated operating costs as the war in Iran drives up oil prices.

Third-party sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon in the U.S. and Canada will face the new charge starting April 17, along with merchants using Remote Fulfillment to ship from the U.S. into Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. A later rollout date of May 2 applies to Buy with Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment services across the U.S. and Canada. Amazon did not provide an end date.

The fee is calculated based on what sellers pay Amazon for fulfillment — not on what customers pay at checkout. For a standard U.S. FBA order, that works out to an increase of about $0.17 per unit. The exact amount varies depending on the size and weight of each item.

"Elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics have increased the cost of operating across the industry," Amazon said in a note to sellers. "We have absorbed these increased costs so far. However, similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated, we implement temporary surcharges on our fulfillment fees to recover a portion of the actual cost increases we are experiencing."

Amazon is not alone in raising costs. The U.S. Postal Service has scheduled an 8 percent rate increase on some package services for April 26, while both UPS and FedEx $FDX have been steadily pushing their fuel surcharge rates higher in the weeks since the Iran conflict began.

The surcharge is not the first of its kind for Amazon. A comparable move came in 2022, when Amazon levied a 5 percent fuel and inflation surcharge. An earlier fee adjustment this year pushed per-unit costs for FBA sellers up by about $0.08 on average.

Some e-commerce analysts are skeptical that the surcharge will be short-lived. My Amazon Guy's VP of sales and marketing, Noah Wickham, posted on LinkedIn, predicting that the surcharge will outlast any easing of fuel prices, writing that Amazon will "keep it regardless."

The war in Iran, now in its fifth week, has sent oil prices higher. On the day of the announcement, June Brent crude futures climbed past $107 a barrel, a gain of more than 6 percent. Markets grappled with uncertainty over the conflict's potential to choke off oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The broader economic fallout from the Iran war has been building since U.S.-Israeli strikes began. Gas prices have risen sharply. Oil is an input cost for freight, manufacturing, and other sectors. A sustained energy shock has the potential to embed itself in the price of a wide range of consumer goods. With its marketplace structure, Amazon has a mechanism for directing cost pressures toward the merchants who sell on its platform — insulating consumers, at least for now, from the direct impact of rising energy prices.