Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, July 17, 2026
Record high refinery margins are driven by significant disruptions in refining capacity, including in Russia and Venezuela, and ongoing geopolitical tensions. Despite lower crude oil prices, product prices like diesel and gasoline remain elevated due to these supply constraints.
“The profit incentive to refine oil into products right now has never been higher.”
“We have lost the oil, we've lost the refineries. The energy system is severely supply constrained. Product prices are telling you an entirely different story, whether it's prices in New York Harbor, you know, diesel prices one hundred and forty, one hundred and fifty dollars in effect right now, the product spread, that's all the products together versus the oil. This morning it was seventy dollars of barrow versus were eighty five. So eighty five plus seventy what that gets you to one fifty five? So you're already there. We have a very serious problem, and the consumer doesn't care about the price of oil. I don't know any consumer out there who consumes oil. They consume diesel, they consume gasoline.”
“The marketing margin, the refinery margins have never been this high.”