Forty-two gallons to a barrel, four components to a pump price, and three of the four are not what a reader assumes they are.
A gallon of gasoline is the only oil price most people ever pay, and it is the one least often explained. The gap between a crude benchmark on a screen and a number on a pump is not a mystery and it is not a markup story. It is four components, each measured by a different method, on a different clock, by a different body — and the largest single source of confusion is that the crude component is not the crude price anyone quotes.
This ledger carries the arithmetic in both directions. It takes the published component shares and converts them to cents so they can be added up, and it takes the cents back to a barrel so a reader can check the answer against a benchmark. Every conversion is computed on this page from the figures shown.
Prepared by The Baratelli Institute · publication date September 10, 2026. Every figure below carries its own measurement date, which is set by whoever measured it and is often older than this page.
Published percentages, with the cents each one represents computed underneath. Sort any column.
| Fuel and month | Retail | Crude oil | Refining | Distribution & marketing | Taxes | Retail, in cents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gasoline, May 2026 | $4.479 | 51.9% 232.5¢ | 21.7% 97.2¢ | 14.8% 66.3¢ | 11.5% 51.5¢ | 447.9¢ |
| Gasoline, June 2008 | $4.054 | 74.8% 303.2¢ | 8.5% 34.5¢ | 6.8% 27.6¢ | 9.8% 39.7¢ | 405.4¢ |
| Diesel, May 2026 | $5.600 | 41.5% 232.4¢ | 25.3% 141.7¢ | 22.5% 126.0¢ | 10.7% 59.9¢ | 560.0¢ |
The June 2008 row is carried deliberately, and it is the most instructive line on the page. At a lower nominal pump price than May 2026, crude was 74.8% of the pump price against 51.9% now — and refining was 8.5% against 21.7%. The 2008 episode was a crude-price event that refiners passed through. This one is a crude-price event and a refining event at the same time, which is why the same pump price is composed differently.
EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026. Measured: May 2026.
Three of the four are defined differently from how they are usually read.
| Component | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| Crude oil | Not a spot price. EIA uses the monthly average refiner acquisition cost of crude oil — what refiners actually paid, averaged across a month and across domestic and imported barrels. It is therefore lower than a spot benchmark in a rising market and higher in a falling one, and it is never the number quoted on a screen. |
| Refining | The gross margin between the acquisition cost of crude and the wholesale price of the finished product. It is a margin, not a cost, so it can go negative — and it has, twice on the published record. |
| Distribution and marketing | A residual. EIA does not measure it; it is what is left after crude, refining and taxes are subtracted from the retail price. Every measurement error in the other three components lands here, which is why this line has also gone negative, and why it is the least trustworthy of the four. |
| Taxes | Federal excise plus a volume-weighted average of state taxes, held as a fixed number of cents per gallon and updated roughly annually. Because it is fixed in cents and the retail price is not, the tax percentage falls whenever the pump price rises without any tax being cut. |
Read the distribution-and-marketing definition twice. It is a residual, which means it is not measured at all — it is what is left over. Every measurement error in the other three components lands in it, and it has printed negative on the published record. A commentator who explains a pump price by pointing at that line is pointing at an arithmetic remainder.
Take the May 2026 gasoline row. Retail was $4.479 a gallon and crude was 51.9% of it, so the crude component was 232.5¢ a gallon. There are 42 gallons in a barrel, so that component annualises to $97.63 a barrel.
Check it against the series that measures the same thing directly. The domestic first purchase price of crude — what producers were actually paid — averaged $104.88 in May 2026. The two figures are within $7.25 of each other, which is about as close as two differently-constructed monthly averages of the same quantity ever come. The bridge holds.
There is a rule of thumb for doing this in your head, and it is worth knowing where it goes wrong. EIA states that each dollar per barrel of crude is about 2.4¢ a gallon at the pump. The exact figure is 2.381¢ — one dollar divided by 42 gallons — so the rounded rule runs 0.8% high. Applied to this month it returns $96.86 a barrel against the exact $97.63. The rule is fine for a mental estimate and wrong for a published figure, which is why this page uses 42 gallons.
The first purchase price went from $62.44 in February 2026 to $104.88 in May 2026 — 68% in three months. A pump price cannot move that fast, and not because of anything a retailer decides. Three of the four components are averages over a month, the crude component is an acquisition cost rather than a spot price, and inventory in the distribution chain was bought at the old price. The pump is a moving average of a market, which is why it lags on the way up and, more visibly to a driver, on the way down.
Fixed in cents, variable as a percentage. Measured January 2026.
| Levy | Cents per gallon | What it excludes, and since when |
|---|---|---|
| Federal excise, gasoline | 18.40¢ | 18.3¢ excise plus 0.1¢ for the Leaking Underground Storage Tank trust fund. Unchanged in nominal cents since 1993. |
| Federal excise, diesel | 24.40¢ | 24.3¢ plus the same 0.1¢ LUST levy. Diesel carries 6¢ more than gasoline federally. |
| State taxes, gasoline — volume-weighted average | 33.27¢ | Excludes gross-receipts and net-receipts taxes and all county and local levies, so the true burden in some states is higher than this line. |
| State taxes, diesel — volume-weighted average | 35.50¢ | Same exclusions. Most states also tax diesel above gasoline. |
| Gasoline, federal plus state average | 51.67¢ | Summed here from the two gasoline rows above. |
| Diesel, federal plus state average | 59.90¢ | Summed here from the two diesel rows above. Diesel carries 8.23¢ more than gasoline. |
This is the part of the pump price a reader can verify independently, so it is worth verifying. Federal and average state taxes on gasoline total 51.67¢ a gallon. Against a retail price of $4.479 that is 11.54%, and EIA publishes the tax share as 11.5%. On diesel the same computation gives 10.70% against a published 10.7%. The arithmetic reproduces the published split to the decimal, which is the point of doing it.
Now hold the tax fixed and move the price. The same 51.67¢ would be 14.8% of a $3.50 gallon and it is 11.5% of a $4.479 gallon. Nothing was cut. The denominator moved. Every report that the tax share of a pump price is falling is, absent a legislated change, a report that the pump price is rising.
No federal fuel tax holiday is in effect. Congressional Research Service report R48948, dated May 15, 2026, records proposals only. The federal rate has not moved, which is precisely why the tax percentage of the pump price has fallen for four consecutive months while no tax was cut.
What each component has done at its limits, which is how a reader learns what the components mean.
| Component and extreme | Figure | Measured | Source | What it carries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crude oil — highest share | 80.0% of the pump price | December 2011 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | Four fifths of the retail price was the cost of the barrel. |
| Crude oil — lowest share | 25.4% of the pump price | April 2020 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | The month crude briefly traded negative. One quarter of the pump price. |
| Refining — highest share | 31.6% of the pump price | April 2001 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | April 2007 is the runner-up at 28.1%. Both are spring gasoline squeezes. |
| Refining — negative | −3.7% of the pump price | November 2008 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | Refiners sold product for less than the crude cost. Recurred in November and December 2011. |
| Distribution and marketing — highest | 46.4% of the pump price | April 2020 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | Nearly half the pump price was the residual line, which is what a residual does when the other three collapse. |
| Distribution and marketing — negative | −3.9% of the pump price | May 2009 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | A residual cannot really be negative. This is the arithmetic reporting that the other three components did not reconcile. |
| Taxes — highest share | 38.7% of the pump price | December 2001 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | A fixed cents-per-gallon tax against a collapsed crude price. |
| Taxes — lowest share | 9.8% of the pump price | June and July 2008 | EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update — “What we pay for in a gallon of” monthly component history (gaspump_hist.php); page release date September 9, 2026 | The same fixed tax against the highest pump price then on record. |
Two of these rows are negative, and a reader should not skip past them. A refining margin can be negative because it is a margin. A distribution and marketing residual cannot really be negative — the fuel did get delivered and sold — so a negative reading there is the arithmetic telling you the other three components did not reconcile in that month. That is useful information about the series and it is not information about the fuel business.
| Series | Figure | Measured | Source | What it carries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular gasoline, U.S. average | $4.157 / gal | week ended September 7, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released September 9, 2026 | Up 8.6¢ from $4.071 the week before. |
| Gasoline, all grades | $4.295 / gal | week ended September 7, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released September 9, 2026 | The all-grades average runs above regular because it includes mid and premium. |
| Diesel, all types | $5.967 / gal | week ended September 7, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released September 9, 2026 | Up 36.8¢ from $5.599 the week before — and a nominal record for the series, which begins in March 1994. |
| Regular gasoline, U.S. average | $4.071 / gal | week ended August 31, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released September 9, 2026 | Carried as the prior week so the change is visible rather than asserted. |
| Diesel, all types | $5.599 / gal | week ended August 31, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released September 9, 2026 | Carried as the prior week. |
Diesel at $5.967 is a nominal record on this series and it is not a record in real terms. The prior nominal high on the weekly all-types diesel series (EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG, which begins March 1994) was $5.810 in the week ended June 20, 2022. EIA changed the methodology of the diesel series on June 13, 2022 — before the comparator week — so the two readings sit on the same side of the break and the comparison is clean. This is a nominal record only; see the real-versus-nominal ledger, where it is not one. The deflated comparison is on the real and nominal ledger, and the mechanism behind it is on the diesel ledger.
The component split is the slowest-arriving series on this reference. The page carrying it was released September 9, 2026 and its newest month is May 2026 — a four-month gap, on a page that presents itself as current. That gap is the reason this ledger exists in the form it does: the retail price of gasoline is published weekly and the explanation of that price is published with a season's delay, so any sentence pairing this week's pump price with the component split is pairing two clocks four months apart.
The practical rule: a sentence containing this week's pump price and a component percentage is a sentence with two clocks in it, four months apart, and it will be wrong in the direction the market has moved since. Either quote the weekly price with no split, or quote the split with its own month attached. This page does the second.
The pump price is not a markup on a benchmark and it is not four independent costs. It is one measured cost, one measured margin, one fixed statutory amount, and one residual that absorbs the error in the other three. Only two of the four are things anyone can be said to charge.
The crude component is the one that is misread most often, and the misreading is systematic. It is the monthly refiner acquisition cost, so in a rising market it sits below the benchmark on the screen and a reader concludes that someone is capturing the difference. In a falling market it sits above, and the same reader concludes the opposite. Neither conclusion is in the data; the lag is.
Our reading is that the composition matters more than the level right now. Crude was 74.8% of the pump price at the 2008 peak and 51.9% in May 2026, while refining went from 8.5% to 21.7%. A pump price at a nominal record built on a refining margin behaves differently from one built on crude: it responds to refinery configuration and product yields rather than to barrels produced. That is a downstream problem with a downstream remedy, and it is why the refining ledger and the diesel ledger exist as separate pages on this reference.
Prices, the supply and demand balance, refining, the two-clock rule and the plain-English glossary that serves all 13 ledgers.
Back to the hub →LedgerSeventy-six years of crude prices deflated to constant July 2026 dollars. The 2008 records are still records in real terms and today's are not close.
Open the ledger →LedgerOne central bank, one date, one fixing time. A dollar barrel converted into 29 currencies without mixing thirty sources and thirty clocks.
Open the ledger →LedgerWhat the shape of the curve does to inventory and why it drives storage behaviour rather than describing it — then the full strip: 63 listed WTI months from the exchange's own Daily Bulletin, $96.05 front against $72.60 a year out, $23.45 of backwardation, open interest printed beside every settlement.
Open the ledger →LedgerTwo entirely different questions that share one word. The price a well needs and the price a treasury needs, kept rigorously apart — with the gaps in each named.
Open the ledger →LedgerAll 41 countries the OPEC bulletin itemises, ranked, with share of world total and reserve life computed two ways. Venezuela first at 303.701 billion barrels; the United States ninth with a reserve life of 8.4 years.
Open the ledger →LedgerEvery OPEC+ member's output for July 2026 against its implied target and its sustainable capacity. Effective spare capacity is 1.09 mb/d, or 1.07% of a 101.5 mb/d market.
Open the ledger →LedgerThe seven countries that hold the voluntary cuts — not eight, and not the full membership — their August and September 2026 decisions, and why quota discipline is currently the wrong lens.
Open the ledger →Ledger588 rigs turning in the United States, 449 drilling for oil, 1,907 worldwide. A forty per cent move in price has produced a 1.4 per cent move in the American count.
Open the ledger →LedgerCapacity measured on two clocks five months apart, crack spreads computed from same-week legs in both units the market quotes, and the one undated figure on this reference, labelled as such.
Open the ledger →LedgerDiesel at $5.967 a gallon, a nominal record and not a real one. Why distillate is tighter than gasoline, and why distillate fuel oil is not diesel.
Open the ledger →LedgerCommercial crude one per cent above its five-year average in the same week the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reads 39.3% of capacity and its lowest since November 1982. The two facts are causally linked.
Open the ledger →LedgerEight passages, six years of flows each, and bypass capacity that covers under a quarter of Hormuz. Plus what the industry itself expected in April, measured, and how wrong it was.
Open the ledger →Provenance. Reserve figures are transcribed from the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin; production, spare-capacity, stock and refining figures from the International Energy Agency Oil Market Report; United States production, refinery capacity and inventory figures from the Energy Information Administration; rig counts from the Baker Hughes North America and Worldwide rig counts; benchmark prices from published daily quotes. Each row names its source and the date the figure was measured. Where a figure was not published, or where a published series does not itemise a country, the cell reads n/d rather than carrying a fabricated estimate. Derived quantities — reserve life, shares of world total, capacity utilisation, spare capacity as a share of supply — are computed from the figures shown and are not separately sourced; they inherit the measurement dates of their inputs, and where the two inputs run on different clocks the page says so. The Baratelli Institute is a publisher operating under the Lowe v. SEC publisher exception. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security or commodity. Figures change; verify against the primary source before relying on any of them.