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Record nominal pump prices and a shrinking inventory cushion are colliding with fuel contracts that were priced for a calmer market.

The EIA now expects distillate inventories, diesel and heating oil, to drop below 100 million barrels this month and stay below the five-year low through most of 2027. That’s not a normal seasonal dip. Stocks fell below the five-year range back in April, and by the week ending August 28, they sat at 104.2 million barrels, 14 percent under the five-year average for that time of year.

Pump prices have made the point more bluntly than any inventory chart could. AAA put the national average diesel price at $5.85 a gallon on September 4, topping the old nominal record of $5.8159 from June 2022. It kept climbing from there. EIA’s own survey had the national average at $6.529 a gallon by September 21. If your fleet, your drilling rigs, or your frac crews run on diesel, this isn’t a headline you can skip past. It’s next month’s fuel bill.

Why the Cushion Disappeared

It’s not for lack of trying at the refinery. EIA data show refinery utilization at 98 percent for the week ending August 28, about as high as it gets, with distillate production running around 5.1 million barrels a day. Normally that pace rebuilds inventories fast. This year it hasn’t been enough.

Part of the reason is exports. U.S. net exports of distillate have run at or near five-year highs almost every month since February, because refiners overseas haven’t been able to match last year’s output. Every barrel that leaves the Gulf Coast for a buyer abroad is a barrel that never shows up in our domestic stockpile, no matter how hard U.S. refiners are running.

The rest of the story is overseas, and it’s ugly. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is still disrupted, alternative routes are seeing less use, and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline this month forced a precautionary shutdown of a line that can move up to 7 million barrels a day to Red Sea export terminals. Add strikes hitting Russian refining capacity and you get a global distillate market that’s tighter than it’s been in years. None of that happened here, but diesel doesn’t price itself on a national basis.

The Crack Spread Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

Crude oil prices only tell part of the story. The rest is the crack spread, the gap between the price of diesel and the cost of the crude used to make it. That spread hit an all-time high of $102.20 a barrel on August 17, then pushed past $106 in early September.

In plain terms, the crack spread is what refiners are earning for turning crude into diesel rather than something else. When it widens, wholesale diesel prices rise relative to crude, and once you layer in taxes, distribution costs, and the usual lag before that hits the pump, fleet operators feel it directly.

EIA breaks diesel pricing down the same way: crude cost, refining margin, distribution and marketing, and taxes. When distillate stocks are this tight and diesel commands a premium over other refined products, the refining-margin piece of that equation widens on its own, regardless of what crude is doing.

The Forecast Is Already Behind the Market

EIA’s September outlook has Brent crude averaging around $90 a barrel through the back half of 2026, easing to roughly $74 in 2027. The agency also expects distillate inventories to stay unusually tight thanks to strong exports and weaker global production.

Here’s the catch. EIA finished that outlook on September 3, before the national diesel average broke $6 a gallon. By September 21 it was at $6.529. The forecast wasn’t wrong when it was written. The market just moved faster than the ink dried.

EIA has flagged the risk itself: if Middle East disruptions run longer than expected, crack spreads could stay wider than the current outlook assumes. The next weekly petroleum report and the October 6 outlook will tell us whether the agency is catching up to where prices already are.

Where This Shows Up in Your Contracts

For oilfield services companies, this is a cost problem before it’s anything else. Rigs, frac fleets, workover units, and the trucks hauling sand, water, and crews all run on diesel, and a lot of that fuel gets bought under contracts signed when prices were a lot lower.

Start with your fuel surcharge or price-adjustment clause. Some track a published benchmark, like EIA’s weekly diesel survey, and adjust automatically. Others rely on a fixed band or a renegotiation window that was never built for a market moving this fast. A surcharge that resets monthly off last month’s average will always lag when prices jump this quickly, and that lag is where one side loses margin and the other picks up a windfall it didn’t earn.

Then there’s force majeure. Under Texas law, and most others, the contract language controls. Higher cost or economic hardship on its own generally doesn’t get you there. A pure price spike, without a qualifying provision or an actual physical inability to perform, usually won’t excuse performance no matter how dramatic the number looks. Read the clause the way opposing counsel will read it, not the way you’d like it to read.

Last point, and it’s the one people miss most: an escalation clause tied to an index only works if somebody is actually watching that index and pulling the trigger when it moves. A good clause nobody monitors is worth about as much as no clause at all.

What to Watch Next

Two things matter more than the headlines over the next few weeks. The weekly petroleum report will show whether distillate stocks actually cross below 100 million barrels as EIA expects, and the October 6 outlook will show whether the agency raises its price assumptions to match where the market has already gone.

Either way, if your fleet runs on diesel, now is the time to pull your fuel clauses and read them closely, not after the next report confirms what your invoices are already telling you.