Bloomberg Surveillance · Thursday, July 30, 2026
High wholesale gasoline prices are attributed to limitations in refining capacity, rather than crude oil prices themselves. Speakers explained that despite geopolitical events and disruptions, the inability to process more crude oil into refined products is leading to elevated prices for gasoline and other distillates, with refining margins widening significantly.
“Well, I think there's this ongoing debate as to why crude prices are not higher, right because the military situation in the Gulf is developing in a way that's not great. And obviously the main folks of that is Saudi Arabia. Looks like we've got some peace in the UAE, we've got a settled situation in Lebanon, and then of course you've got an absolute beating that the Ukrainians are handing out to the Russian oil infrastructure. So I think the answer to the question is refining capacity limitations, and so there's not the ability to use more crude to bring down product prices. And you've got to remember that wholesale gallasolene is right now one hundred and forty dollars a barrel. So I think people are looking at the wrong oil price.”
“I mean, I think four twenty at the wah Wah is one hundred and sixty seventy dollars a barrow, right, So when you think about it in those terms, and then you know, Brent's at ninety, we've got a seventy dollars refining margin. And I say that's a margin, that's not a price. So you know, we've had Valero, for example, printing twelve dollars this morning in their results. I think a year ago they made one or two. So there's you know, it's just a question of how people look at it, and they just focus on crude oil. But when you think about what happened in horn Moves, you shut down six million barrels of they of refining capacity, that's that's demand for crude, and China of course shut down six million barrels a day of oil crude oil imports.”