Bloomberg Surveillance · Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Stephen Shulker highlights that while commercial crude oil stocks are adequate, diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel inventories are at historic lows. He specifically points to a dangerous situation with distillates, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine impacting Russian refinery capacity and European supply, making US refiners the marginal supplier.
“What is not in good shape are diesel, gasoline, jet fuel inventories. Those are at lows. And the concern, the overarching concern in the market right now is the situation in distillate.”
“So the United States refiners who are doing everything they can at max capacity to get oil, jet fuel, gasoline onto the market. They are now the marginal supplier of distillate fuels going into Europe at this point.”
“Inventories, in fact, right now in the United States, are at the lowest point for the season And we're at the weakest demand part. So as we go into fall and as intermodal demand picks up, as agricultural demand picks up, as heating demand picks up for distillates, we're looking at an extremely dangerous situation.”