Oil Traders Race Against Time to Solve a Global Diesel Crunch

Valero's Wilmington Refinery adjacent to the Port of Long Beach in California, April 2021. Photo by Bing Guan /Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomber

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(Bloomberg) — The oil market is pulling all the levers it can to ease a global diesel crunch, but the window is narrowing to replenish stockpiles of the world’s workhorse fuel before hurricanes and refinery maintenance curtail output. 

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From the US Gulf Coast to Rotterdam and Singapore, storage tanks have only recently started rising from dramatically low levels, and traders say it’s going to be a tight race to refill them. With price spikes during the Israel-Iran conflict fresh in the memory, most say it’s hard to see a major easing, echoing warnings from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and energy giant TotalEnergies SE. 

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The fate of the fuel has wide-reaching ramifications for the global economy. Higher prices can ripple through inflation readings and dent consumer and business confidence at a time when US President Donald Trump’s tariff wars also raise costs. American farmers will need large volumes of diesel to power their tractors and grain dryers during harvesting season in the fall, and drivers are already paying the most at the pump in about a year.

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Meanwhile, Trump’s push to punish India for processing Russian crude into much needed global diesel supplies leaves Europe particularly vulnerable. The continent has become more dependent on fuel from further afield after direct imports from nearby Russia were banned.  

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“We’re bullish for the end of the year,” said Rami Ramadan, co-head of global middle distillates at commodity trader BB Energy. “We are going to be in for some shocks for sure because of how Europe has been disconnected from its closest sources of supply.”

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US stockpiles of diesel’s family of fuels — used in everything from locomotives and trucks to power generation and heating — plunged to their lowest summer levels this century. While inventories should normally build over the summer, longer-term factors have made things more acute in the last few years.

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A slew of plant closures in the US and Europe since the Covid-driven oil market crash has tightened supplies in key hubs. Even as high margins lead refiners like Phillips 66 and Valero Energy to maximize diesel output, US inventories have only in recent weeks inched past the critical lows seen in the summer of 2022, just after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In Europe buyers await tankers from the Middle East and Asia. 

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After touching the equivalent of $110 a barrel following Israel’s air strikes on Iran, prices have retreated closer to $90. Diesel’s strength over the summer helped support crude prices while OPEC+ restored production faster than initially planned.

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Before the war in Ukraine, European diesel seldom traded $15 a barrel above Brent crude. Ever since, it has rarely traded at less than that. The spread, known in market parlance as a crack, is currently above $20 in Europe and around $30 in the US. 

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Goldman Sachs expects both spreads to stay near current levels into 2026 “on continuing structural tightness in refining capacity,” and TotalEnergies said stronger diesel prices will become a “persistent feature” of the global oil market.