THE BARATELLI INSTITUTE
· Mentoring at Scale
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THE BARATELLI INSTITUTE
· Mentoring at Scale
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 October 24, 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 $105.01 in May 2026. The two figures are within $7.38 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 $105.01 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 | $4.284 / gal | week ended October 19, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released October 20, 2026 | Down 4.7¢ from $4.331 the week before — a FOURTH consecutive fall, and the second smallest of the four. The weekly changes now run +15.9¢, −1.3¢, −11.1¢, −2.3¢ and −4.7¢ across the six weeks ended September 14 through October 19, for a six-week move of −3.5¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $4.284 less the $4.319 of the week ended September 14. ONLY THE −4.7¢ LEG WAS READ THIS WEEK; the four before it are carried from the prior reading rather than re-read, and the six-week total is therefore an arithmetic consequence of one measured leg and four carried ones rather than a figure read off a table. That is said because a total assembled this way is sound and is not a citation. 🔴 THE SIX-WEEK TOTAL HAS CROSSED ZERO, AND THE CROSSING IS A PROPERTY OF THE WINDOW RATHER THAN OF THIS WEEK. It read +17.4¢ last week over September 7 through October 12 and reads −3.5¢ now over September 14 through October 19: the +16.2¢ week that opened the old window rolled off the front while a −4.7¢ week joined the back, which accounts for 20.9 of the 20.9 cents the total moved. A rolling window's total is a different measurement every week and is not a series, so the sign change must not be read as six weeks of gasoline having turned negative; it is the same four interior legs with one leg swapped at each end. The weekly changes are the comparable quantities and the four in common are unchanged to the tenth of a cent. 🔴 A FOURTH CONSECUTIVE FALL STRENGTHENS THE DIRECTION AND STILL DOES NOT GIVE A SLOPE, AND THAT READING IS RESTATED RATHER THAN UPGRADED. The magnitudes run −1.3¢, −11.1¢, −2.3¢, −4.7¢ — the fourth is twice the third and less than half the second, which is not a monotone anything in either direction. Four observations with one sign is a stronger direction than three; four magnitudes with no order is not a trajectory, and a decline that doubles after decelerating by four fifths is as consistent with noise around a falling level as with a reacceleration. So the reading adopted last week stands verbatim: the direction is established and the slope is not. The four falls together give back 19.4¢ of the 40.7¢ the three preceding weeks added, and the level remains above where it sat in early September. 🔴 AND LAST WEEK'S UNIFORMITY READING IS DISCHARGED — REFUTED IN SIGN, NOT WEAKENED. The entry demoted below reported regular −2.3¢, all grades −2.5¢ and diesel −2.0¢ and called the uniformity 'the shape a common upstream input makes'. This week regular fell 4.7¢ while on-highway diesel ROSE 9.7¢, and the split is uniform WITHIN each product and opposite BETWEEN them: every gasoline region the publisher prints is down or flat, with PADD 2 at exactly 0.000, and every diesel region is up, from +2.9¢ to +15.6¢. A common-input reading cannot produce opposite signs on the same week, so it is withdrawn as a claim and retained below as the measurement it was. No replacement attribution is offered: this reference carries no crude-to-pump pass-through model, and the product split is the observation. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was measured on the week ended October 12, 2026, and its uniformity paragraph is refuted above: Down 2.3¢ from $4.354 the week before — a THIRD consecutive fall, and the smallest of the three. Across the six weeks the publisher's table displays (September 7 through October 12) the weekly changes run +16.2¢, +15.9¢, −1.3¢, −11.1¢ and −2.3¢, for a six-week move of +17.4¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $4.331 less $4.157. 🔴 THE SIX-WEEK TOTAL IS NOT COMPARABLE TO THE ONE THIS ROW CARRIED LAST WEEK, AND THE REASON IS THE WINDOW RATHER THAN THE MARKET. The predecessor reported +28.3¢ over August 31 through October 5. This week's table displays September 7 through October 12, so the +8.6¢ week that opened the old window has rolled off the front while a −2.3¢ week has joined the back. A rolling window's total is a different measurement every week and is not a series; the two figures must not be read as a decline from 28.3 to 17.4. The weekly changes are the comparable quantities, and the four they have in common are unchanged to the tenth of a cent. 🔴 THE REFUSAL TWO ENTRIES BELOW IS NOW DISCHARGED IN SIGN AND NOT IN TRAJECTORY, WHICH IS A NARROWER THING THAN A TURN AND IS STATED NARROWLY. Three consecutive falls is the sample size this file's own cadence rule elsewhere treats as the threshold for reading a repeated pattern, and the direction has now repeated three times without exception. What the three observations do NOT support is a trajectory: the magnitudes run −1.3¢, −11.1¢, −2.3¢, which is not a monotone anything, and a decline that decelerates by four fifths is as consistent with a level finding a floor as with a descent continuing. So the reading adopted is that the direction is established and the slope is not. The three falls together give back 14.7¢ of the 40.7¢ the three preceding weeks added; note that the +8.6¢ leg of that 40.7¢ is no longer displayed on the publisher's table and is carried from the prior reading rather than re-read, which is said because a figure sourced to a table that no longer shows it is a figure with a stale citation. The level remains above where it sat in early September. 🔴 AND ALL THREE PRINTED SERIES FELL BY NEARLY THE SAME AMOUNT THIS WEEK, WHICH IS RECORDED AND NOT EXPLAINED. Regular −2.3¢, all grades −2.5¢, on-highway diesel −2.0¢. A move of about two cents across grades and across the gasoline/diesel split is the shape a common upstream input makes rather than a product-specific one, but this reference has no crude-to-pump pass-through model and the front-month crude quotes over the same window moved UP on WTI, so no attribution is offered. The uniformity is the observation. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was measured on the week ended October 5, 2026: Down 11.1¢ from $4.465 the week before — a second consecutive fall, and the second one is eight and a half times the first. Across the six weeks the EIA's own table displays (August 31 through October 5) the weekly changes run +8.6¢, +16.2¢, +15.9¢, −1.3¢ and −11.1¢, for a six-week move of +28.3¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $4.354 less $4.071. The two falls together give back 12.4¢ of the 40.7¢ the three preceding weeks added, so the level is still above where it sat at the end of August. 🔴 THE PRIOR WEEK'S READING SAID 'a single small decline after two very large rises is not a turn, and it is stated as one week's reading rather than as a direction.' That refusal is retained and it was the right one, but note what the second observation does and does not license: two consecutive falls, the second much larger than the first, is a stronger reading than one — and it is still two observations, which is the sample size this file's own standing instruction refuses to adopt a direction off. No turn is claimed. The year-ago and two-year-ago comparisons the prior entry carried are DROPPED rather than carried forward: the publisher's table as read on October 7, 2026 displays six recent weeks and no year-ago column, so those figures have no source in the reading that produced this row. |
| Gasoline, all grades | $4.471 / gal | week ended October 12, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released October 14, 2026 | 🔴 HELD AT THE WEEK ENDED OCTOBER 12, 2026 WHILE THE ROWS AROUND IT ADVANCED, AND THE ROW CARRIES ITS OWN ASOF AND ITS OWN SOURCE LINE TO SAY SO. The October 20, 2026 release advances regular gasoline and on-highway diesel to the week ended October 19. The all-grades average is not in it: the landing page that carries the October 20 release publishes regular and diesel only, and the navigator that carries midgrade, premium and all grades was still stamped 'Release Date: 10/14/2026' with its last column at 10/12/26 when it was read. So this is NOT IN THE RELEASE THE INSTITUTE READ rather than NOT PUBLISHED, and only the first of those is a claim the Institute can make. The figure, its measurement date and its provenance line all stay on the October 12 clock together, which is the whole point: advancing any one of the three without the other two is the defect. 🔴 AND THE ALL-GRADES-LESS-REGULAR SPREAD IS NOT PRINTED THIS WEEK, BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE MEASURED. It stood at 14.0¢ in the week ended October 12 ($4.471 less $4.331). The held $4.471 less this week's $4.284 is 18.7¢, and that is a subtraction between two prices measured a week apart — clean arithmetic over a quantity that does not exist. A spread is a comparison within one week or it is nothing, so no spread is carried, and the 18.7 is named here only so that a later reader who computes it knows it was considered and refused. The premium-less-regular spread is withheld on the same ground. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows is the reading made when this row was current, on the week ended October 12, 2026: Down 2.5¢ from $4.496. The all-grades average runs above regular because it includes mid and premium — midgrade printed $4.957 and premium $5.366 in the same table. 🔴 THE SLOW-REPRICE READING IS REFUTED ON THIS STEP, NOT MERELY WEAKENED. Two weeks of entries below explain all grades falling LESS than regular as 'what a mix weighted toward the grades that reprice more slowly does' — 0.7¢ against 1.3¢, then 10.7¢ against 11.1¢. This week all grades fell 2.5¢ against regular's 2.3¢, which is MORE, so the sign the reading depended on has flipped. Three observations, two one way and one the other, with the exception arriving on the smallest move of the three: that is the pattern a mix effect swamped by rounding produces, and it is the honest reading. On a two-cent move, a two-tenth difference is one tenth of the quantity being measured. The slow-reprice explanation is withdrawn as a claim about this spread and retained below as the measurement it was. 🔴 AND A MISLABEL IN THE ENTRY BELOW IS CORRECTED HERE RATHER THAN SILENTLY FIXED. That entry reports 'the premium-to-regular spread widened only from 13.8¢ to 14.2¢.' Those two figures are ALL-GRADES minus regular — $4.603 less $4.465 and $4.496 less $4.354 — and not premium minus regular, which stood at $1.046 in the week ended October 5. The arithmetic was right and the name on it was wrong, which is the harder defect to see because nothing fails. Measured on this week's table: all grades less regular narrowed from 14.2¢ to 14.0¢, and premium less regular narrowed from $1.046 to $1.035. Both spreads are named with the grades they are made of from here on. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was measured on the week ended October 5, 2026, and carries the mislabel named above: Down 10.7¢ from $4.603. The all-grades average runs above regular because it includes mid and premium. 🔴 AND THE RELATIONSHIP THE PRIOR ENTRY DESCRIBED HAS INVERTED. Last week all grades fell about half as far as regular (0.7¢ against 1.3¢) and the entry explained it as 'what a mix weighted toward the grades that reprice more slowly does.' This week all grades fell 10.7¢ against regular's 11.1¢ — still less, but by four tenths of a cent rather than by half, so the premium-to-regular spread widened only from 13.8¢ to 14.2¢. The slow-reprice reading survives in sign and is much weaker in magnitude, which is what a larger move does to it: a mix effect scales with the move and a 0.6¢ difference on an 11¢ fall is nearly proportional. Stated as two weeks' readings, not as a rule about the spread. |
| Diesel, all types | $6.276 / gal | week ended October 19, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released October 20, 2026 | UP 9.7¢ from $6.179, which ENDS A RUN OF THREE CONSECUTIVE FALLS and is the first rise in either product since the week ended September 21, 2026. Ultra-low-sulfur on-highway diesel printed the same $6.276 in this release. It is also the largest weekly move in either product since the week ended October 5, when diesel fell 18.3¢. The weekly changes now run +24.4¢, −14.7¢, −18.3¢, −2.0¢ and +9.7¢ across the six weeks ended September 14 through October 19, for a six-week move of −0.9¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $6.276 less the $6.285 of the week ended September 14. As on the regular-gasoline row, ONLY THE +9.7¢ LEG WAS READ THIS WEEK and the four before it are carried rather than re-read, so the total is an arithmetic consequence and not a citation; and it is not comparable to the +21.2¢ this row reported last week, because the window rolled and dropped the +31.8¢ leg off the front. 🔴 THIS PRINT IS STILL NOT A RECORD, AND THE RECORD-TO-PRINT GAP NARROWED BY EXACTLY THE WEEKLY RISE, WHICH IS AN IDENTITY RATHER THAN A COINCIDENCE. The record remains the $6.529 of the week ended September 21, 2026, and it now STANDS FOR A FOURTH CONSECUTIVE WEEK against the one week each of the three prints that set it — $5.967 on September 7, $6.285 on September 14 and $6.529 on September 21. The gap was 35.0¢ last week and is 25.3¢ now, a narrowing of 9.7¢: the record did not move, so the gap must move by the print's whole weekly change and by nothing else. Three consecutive weeks of the gap widening is therefore ended too, and the prediction recorded on the prior-week row below — that a call site reading the record off a current row would print a record wrong by an amount growing every week — is NOT discharged by this: the error would now be 25.3¢ rather than 35.0¢, which is smaller and is still wrong, and the defect is the wrong date rather than the size of the gap. 🔴 AND THE 'THREE MORE WEEKS AT THIS WEEK'S PACE' SENTENCE IN THE ENTRY BELOW IS WITHDRAWN RATHER THAN UPDATED, BECAUSE THE PACE REVERSED SIGN. That sentence observed that the series sat 17.9¢ above $6.00 and would clear it in about three weeks at the then-current rate of decline, and labelled itself an arithmetic observation about a rate measured once. One week later the rate is positive and the margin is 27.6¢ rather than 17.9¢, so the extrapolation does not merely re-date — it points the other way. It is withdrawn, and the reason it is withdrawn is the reason it was labelled: a rate measured once is not a rate. No new extrapolation replaces it. The series remains above $6.00, which it first cleared in the week ended September 14, 2026. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was measured on the week ended October 12, 2026: Down 2.0¢ from $6.199, a THIRD consecutive fall and much the smallest. Ultra-low-sulfur on-highway diesel printed the same $6.179 in this table. This print is not a record: the record remains the $6.529 of the week ended September 21, 2026, and it now STANDS FOR A THIRD CONSECUTIVE WEEK, against the one week each of the three prints that preceded it — $5.967 on September 7, $6.285 on September 14 and $6.529 on September 21. Across the six weeks the publisher's table displays (September 7 through October 12) the changes run +31.8¢, +24.4¢, −14.7¢, −18.3¢ and −2.0¢, for a six-week move of +21.2¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $6.179 less $5.967. As on the regular-gasoline row, that total is NOT the +60.0¢ this row reported last week: the window rolled forward one week, dropping the +36.8¢ leg off the front. The three falls give back 35.0¢ of the 93.0¢ the three preceding weeks added, a little over a third — and the +36.8¢ component of that 93.0¢ is no longer on the displayed table and is carried from the prior reading rather than re-read. The series remains above $6.00, which it first cleared in the week ended September 14, 2026, and the margin is now 17.9¢ rather than the 19.9¢ of last week: three more weeks at this week's pace would take it through, and that is an arithmetic observation about a rate measured once, not a forecast. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was measured on the week ended October 5, 2026: Down 18.3¢ from $6.382, a second consecutive fall and a larger one. This print is not a record: the record remains the $6.529 of the week ended September 21, 2026, and it now STANDS FOR A SECOND CONSECUTIVE WEEK — the first time on this series since the run began that the record has survived two prints. The run it ended was $5.967 in the week ended September 7, $6.285 on September 14 and $6.529 on September 21, each standing exactly one week. Across the six weeks the table displays (August 31 through October 5) the changes run +36.8¢, +31.8¢, +24.4¢, −14.7¢ and −18.3¢, for a six-week move of +60.0¢ — which checks against the endpoints, $6.199 less $5.599. The two falls give back 33.0¢ of the 93.0¢ those three weeks added, a little over a third. The series remains above $6.00, which it first cleared in the week ended September 14, 2026. The year-ago comparison the prior entry carried is DROPPED for the same reason given on the regular-gasoline row: the table as read carries no year-ago column. |
| Regular gasoline, U.S. average | $4.331 / gal | week ended October 12, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released October 20, 2026 | Carried as the prior week so the change is visible rather than asserted. |
| Diesel, all types | $6.179 / gal | week ended October 12, 2026 | EIA, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices, U.S. average, all formulations; released October 20, 2026 | Carried as the prior week, and NOT the record — the record is the $6.529 of the week ended September 21, 2026, read from DIESEL_RECORD_NOW and DIESEL_RECORD_ASOF and from nowhere else. 🔴 THE PREDICTION RECORDED BELOW HAS NOW BEEN BORNE OUT TWICE, ON TWO CONSECUTIVE INTERVALS, WHICH IS WHAT TURNS IT FROM A WARNING INTO A MEASUREMENT. The gap between the prior-week print and the standing record was 14.7¢ a week ago and is 33.0¢ now, so a call site that read the record off this row would this week be printing a record 33.0¢ low under the wrong date — more than twice as wrong as the first time, and widening in the same direction every week the record stands. A defect whose cost grows with each interval is worth more attention than one that recurs at a constant size. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — what follows was written when this row carried the week ended September 28 at $6.382: Carried as the prior week. 🔴 AND IT IS NOT THE RECORD, WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SPLIT BELOW AND IS NOW SCORED. The predecessor of this row read 'This is also the standing nominal record on the series' and was true when written, for the one week in which RETAIL_WEEK_PRIOR_ASOF and DIESEL_RECORD_ASOF named the same week. The comment on DIESEL_RECORD_NOW predicted in terms that 'They coincide for one week only, and a reader who collapses them here will ship a record dated to whatever week happens to precede.' That prediction has now been borne out on the first interval after it was written: the prior week is the week ended September 28 at $6.382, the record is the week ended September 21 at $6.529, and a call site that had read the record off this row would this week be printing a record 14.7¢ low under the wrong date. The record is read from DIESEL_RECORD_NOW and DIESEL_RECORD_ASOF and from nowhere else. |
The nominal record on this series is $6.529, set in the week ended September 21, 2026 — above this week’s $6.276, and not a record in real terms. The nominal high on the weekly all-types diesel series (EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG, which begins March 1994) is $6.529, set in the week ended September 21, 2026, and that is the figure the real-versus-nominal comparison measures. The run that set it has ended: the series took a record at $5.967 in the week ended September 7, 2026, broke it at $6.285 a week later, broke it again at $6.529 on September 21 — three consecutive weeks, each record standing exactly one week — and then fell 14.7¢ to $6.382 in the week ended September 28. So the record and the current print are no longer the same number, and this note is about the record. 🔴 ADVANCED October 20, 2026: the record has now stood for FOUR consecutive weeks, against one week each for the three prints that set it — and the run of falls beneath it has ENDED. The current print is $6.276, which puts the record-to-print gap at 25.3¢. That gap widened in each of the three weeks after the run ended and NARROWED this week, by exactly the print's own weekly rise, because the record is a fixed number and the gap can move by nothing else. Both figures in this sentence are derived from DIESEL_RECORD_NOW and from the current RETAIL_WEEKLY row rather than typed, which is the reason those two constants were split in the first place, and it is why this sentence needed no arithmetic edit when the sign of the weekly change flipped — only its prose. 🔴 SUPERSEDED AND LABELLED RATHER THAN DELETED, per the Two-Clock rule — read as of October 15, 2026, when the tokens resolved to $6.179 and 35.0¢: the record had then stood for THREE consecutive weeks and the series had fallen in every week since the run ended, and the gap was 'the widest it has been since the run ended, and widening in the same direction each week.' The first clause was true and the second is now false. The last high set before that run was $5.810 in the week ended June 20, 2022, and that is what the deflated comparison starts from. EIA changed the methodology of the diesel series on June 13, 2022 — before the 2022 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 September 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: 65 listed WTI months from the exchange's own Daily Bulletin, $97.97 front against $80.13 a year out, $17.84 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 September 2026 against its implied target and its sustainable capacity. Effective spare capacity is 0.27 mb/d, or 0.26% of a 102.3 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 →Ledger603 rigs turning in the United States, 460 drilling for oil, 1,919 worldwide. A forty per cent move in price has produced a 0.0 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 $6.276 a gallon, below a nominal record of $6.529 that was never 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 38.9% 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.