The Reading Room

One question at a time, answered from the primary sources.

Issues of the desk — each one a data-grounded read on the crude complex, with an evidence ledger at the bottom.

Issue No. 2 · MarginsJuly 12, 2026

The barrel is cheap. Refining it isn't.

Crude is flat and speculators are the least-long WTI in sixteen years of weekly data. Meanwhile our Gulf Coast 3-2-1 crack just printed $60.63, the 99.8th percentile of ten thousand trading days, with gasoline, diesel, and jet margins all above the 97th percentile at once. A reading of a complex-wide margin regime: the jet paradox, China's quota lever, the late cavalry of mega-refineries, and a maintenance bill coming due in autumn.

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Issue No. 1 · DistillatesJuly 11, 2026

Russia turned off the diesel tap. The tape was already moving.

Moscow banned diesel exports on July 8 — the third product pulled from world markets this year, after drone strikes broke a quarter of Russian refining. Our distillate-crack series printed a 99.5th-percentile $65/bbl two days before the announcement, and U.S. stocks sit near 23-year lows. What the data said, what history says, and why July 31 is a soft date.

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