Crude oil
Above normalDiesel price vs crude oil
$3.910/gal for the week of Oct 5, 2026: the US pump price minus WTI crude, converted to dollars per gallon. Not the crack spread; refining, distribution, taxes and margin combined, all netted against crude.
Data through Oct 6, 2026 · source last checked Oct 15, 2026 · page revised Oct 13, 2026
Cite
- US retail diesel (pump)
- WTI crude ($/gal equivalent, divided by 42)
- Brent crude ($/gal equivalent, divided by 42)
About this data
- Source
- Derived from EIA retail diesel and EIA daily crude oil spot
- Series
- US retail diesel minus WTI crude, converted to $/gal
- Basis
- Retail pump (taxed) minus crude; not the wholesale crack spread
- Geography
- United States
- Unit
- $/gal
- Calculation
- Weekly, crude matched to the nearest business day
- Last observation
- Oct 6, 2026
- Update frequency
- Weekly
Now $3.910/gal, 76% above the 5-yr median. The gap narrowed by $0.106/gal this week.
The pump-crude gap narrowed $0.106/gal on the week to $3.910/gal. At 76% above its five-year median, the gap sits well above normal despite this week's pullback.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $3.910/gal | $4.016/gal | -2.6% |
| vs 4 weeks ago | $3.910/gal | $3.760/gal | +4.0% |
| Year over year | $3.910/gal | $2.223/gal | +75.9% |
| vs 5-yr median | $3.910/gal | $2.223/gal | +75.9% |
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $96.24/bbl | $96.16/bbl | +0.1% |
| vs 4 weeks ago | $96.24/bbl | $92.69/bbl | +3.8% |
| Year over year | $96.24/bbl | $62.49/bbl | +54.0% |
| vs 5-yr median | $96.24/bbl | $77.76/bbl | +23.8% |
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $125.44/bbl | $113.96/bbl | +10.1% |
| vs 4 weeks ago | $125.44/bbl | $104.47/bbl | +20.1% |
| Year over year | $125.44/bbl | $67.09/bbl | +87.0% |
| vs 5-yr median | $125.44/bbl | $81.74/bbl | +53.5% |
- Non-crude share of the pump price
The pump price minus WTI converted to dollars per gallon, over time. Not the crack spread (that compares wholesale product to wholesale crude); this compares the retail pump price to crude.
Previous weeks
An earlier week
The pump premium over crude narrowed $0.204/gal this week to $4.016/gal, but remains 81% above the five-year median. The gap has gained 13.9% over the past four weeks and 80.6% from a year ago.
Week of Sep 28, 2026
The gap between pump price and crude oil stands at $4.220/gal, 88% above the five-year median. The gap widened $0.374/gal this week. Over four weeks, the gap has risen from $3.596 to $4.220.
Week of Sep 21, 2026
The gap between pump diesel and crude oil widened to $3.846/gal, up $0.086/gal on the week. The gap represents refining, distribution, taxes and station margin combined, and now sits 73% above the five-year median.
Week of Sep 14, 2026
The gap between US pump diesel and crude widened to $3.969/gal for the week of Sep 14, up $0.209/gal week over week. The spread sits 79% above the five-year median.
About Diesel price vs crude oil
This gap is not the crack spread. A crack spread compares a wholesale refined product to wholesale crude. This is the RETAIL pump price minus crude, so it carries refining, distribution, station costs and federal and state fuel taxes all in one number, not just a refiner's margin.
Crude moves fastest. The pump follows with a lag of days to weeks as the new crude cost works through refining and distribution, so a crude spike this week shows up at the pump gradually, not instantly, and the gap often widens briefly right after a sharp crude move before it settles back.
A widening gap over a longer stretch, weeks rather than days, points at something other than crude: tighter refining capacity, a distribution bottleneck, or a tax change, since the crude cost is already netted out of this number. A narrowing gap points the other way, the pump catching up to a crude move that already happened, or refining and distribution costs easing.
WTI, converted to dollars per gallon by dividing by 42 (the gallons in a barrel), is the crude benchmark the gap uses. How do crude oil futures move diesel prices? covers the crack spread and the rack that sit between crude and the pump.
WTI and Brent
WTI, short for West Texas Intermediate, is the benchmark price for crude oil delivered at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the main US crude oil futures contract. Brent is the waterborne benchmark: crude priced off the North Sea and used as the reference for oil that moves by tanker, which is most of the crude traded internationally. Neither is a diesel price. Refiners buy crude like this, run it into diesel alongside gasoline, jet fuel and other products, and sell the diesel into the wholesale and retail market the rest of this site tracks.
The Brent-WTI gap matters for where a diesel buyer sits. Coastal markets that import crude and refined product by tanker, the East Coast and California especially, price closer to Brent's waterborne economics. The pipeline-connected interior, the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, prices closer to WTI. A wide Brent-over-WTI gap tends to show up as a bigger coastal premium on the regional diesel prices this site tracks, and a narrow one tends to bring the coasts and the interior closer together. On Oct 6, 2026 Brent sat $29.20 a barrel over WTI.