Spot
Above normalGulf Coast ULSD spot price
$4.422/gal on Aug 18, 2026. Daily FOB spot at U.S. Gulf Coast, the wholesale layer under the pump price. Untaxed; not a retail price.
Data through Aug 18, 2026 · source last checked Aug 25, 2026 · page revised Aug 25, 2026
Cite
- Spot
About this data
- Source
- EIA daily spot price
- Series
- ULSD spot, 0-15 ppm sulfur
- Basis
- FOB hub, wholesale, untaxed
- Geography
- Gulf Coast
- Unit
- $/gal
- Calculation
- Daily (business days)
- Last observation
- Aug 18, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now $4.422/gal, 102% above the 5-yr median.
Gulf Coast ULSD spot rose to $4.422/gal on Aug 18, up 4.1% on the week. The wholesale hub price is 102% above the five-year median.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $4.422/gal | $4.248/gal | +4.1% |
| vs 4 weeks ago | $4.422/gal | $4.039/gal | +9.5% |
| Year over year | $4.422/gal | $2.174/gal | +103.4% |
| vs 5-yr median | $4.422/gal | $2.191/gal | +101.8% |
Previous weeks
An earlier week
The Gulf Coast spot hit $4.248/gal, up 14.1% from the week prior and 86% above the 5-year median. Year over year the spot has gained 91.6%.
An earlier week
Gulf Coast ULSD fell 23.7 cents on the week to $3.868/gal. The price is 73% above the 5-year median. The four-week move added 66.4 cents from $3.204/gal.
About Gulf Coast ULSD spot price
Spot is the price of a bulk cargo of ULSD changing hands at a trading hub: untaxed wholesale, not a pump or rack price. It is the layer retail prices follow, usually with a lag of days to weeks.
Every quote is dated to its own trading day. EIA quotes the series for each business day but publishes it in batches, so the newest print here can run several days behind the weekly retail number. An older date on this page means EIA has not released the days in between yet, not that the data is stale.
Gulf Coast ULSD spot is the wholesale benchmark for diesel changing hands at the refineries and terminals along the Texas and Louisiana coast, PADD 3, home to the largest concentration of diesel refining capacity in the country. Because so much of the nation's diesel starts here, this hub works as the price floor the rest of the pipeline network builds on. As product moves north on the Colonial, Plantation and Explorer pipelines toward the Midwest and East Coast, pipeline tariffs and terminal handling fees get added on top of this starting price. An inland rack price in a city like Chicago or Kansas City is not part of EIA's public daily record, but it moves off this quote at its core, plus the cost of getting the barrel there.
That relationship runs through the Midwest retail number this site tracks, too. PADD 2 has enough of its own refining and pipeline access to Canadian and Bakken crude that it usually prices close to the national average rather than carrying a persistent premium, but a Gulf Coast supply disruption, a refinery outage or a hurricane that shuts in export terminals, still reaches the Midwest through this same pipeline system, arriving with the same days-to-weeks lag that separates any spot move from the pump.
This page tracks the raw wholesale quote only, not a rack or retail price. For the gap between this spot price and the US pump price, the retail-layer proxy that carries taxes, distribution and margin, see the US pump price vs Gulf Coast spot page. For the general relationship between spot, rack and retail pricing, see Retail, rack and spot: the diesel price ladder.