Diesel Shortage Today — Where Supply Is Tight, and Why

Update, 24 September. The clearest illustration of this page’s argument arrived this week: Brent fell five sessions, from a four-month high near $107.50 on 15 September to a $99.25 settle on the 22nd, while US pump diesel set record after record — $6.448 on the 18th, $6.505 on the 20th and $6.5276 on the 22nd (AAA). Brent then rallied 3.86% to $103.08 on the 23rd when Iran’s President rejected a Hormuz reopening offer; diesel had not waited for it. Correction: yesterday’s version of this paragraph said crude fell six consecutive sessions and traded near $98.40 on the 23rd. Those were intraday readings; the session closed up 3.86%.

That divergence is the whole point of this page. Crude can be re-routed; refining yield and distillate inventory cannot. Saudi Arabia spent a fortnight proving the first half — shipping through Hormuz and transferring off Oman while its bypass pipeline was shut, then restarting that pipeline on 22 September and beginning to reverse the flow. No equivalent manoeuvre exists for a barrel of diesel that was never refined.

The horizon has also lengthened. The IEA puts diesel roughly 95% above pre-war levels, trading above $220 a barrel. The EIA now projects US distillate inventories drop below 100 million barrels in September and remain under the five-year low through much of 2027, with retail forecasts revised up to a $5.07/gal average for 2026 and $4.40 for 2027. US distillate stocks built 1.6 Mbbl to 107.9 Mbbl in the week to 11 September and still sit about 13% below their five-year average — a build that does not signal comfort. This has stopped being a spike and become a repricing.

Petrol and diesel come out of the same barrel, but not in the same proportions, and not from the same refineries. A refinery’s diesel yield depends on its configuration and its crude slate; Europe’s refineries were built for a petrol-heavy market and have imported diesel for two decades to cover the gap. That import dependence is the whole story. When the exporters Europe relies on are hit — Russia by drone strikes on refining, the Gulf by the Hormuz closure and the Jazan outage — there is no domestic slack to absorb it.

Three supply losses are running at once, and it is their simultaneity that matters. Russia, the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, has lost roughly a quarter of its refining capacity to Ukrainian strikes across the first half of 2026, has banned petrol exports to 31 January 2027, and saw the Ust-Luga export terminal set on fire on 2 September. The Gulf: Jazan (~400 kb/d) has been shut since 27 July with its restart already slipped, and Hormuz throughput was 4.9m b/d in Q2 against 21.6m before the war. Europe itself entered the year with depleted inventories and closed capacity. A market can usually cover one damaged region by importing from another. It cannot cover three.

Why it matters: diesel reaches households through the price of everything moved by lorry, not through the pump. It is the fuel of freight, agriculture and construction — and it arrives as the Northern Hemisphere harvest and the winter heating season begin competing for the same barrels.

GEF applies one rule across every pin on this site: shortage means confirmed physical rationing, queues, caps or closures; watch means price stress or supply risk without confirmed rationing. The distinction matters more for diesel than for any other fuel, because diesel stress migrates into the price of goods long before it shows up at a forecourt.

Rationed (shortage tier): France is the one shortage pin with diesel in it: gazole was missing at 12.5% of stations on 21 September, within an overall 16.5–17% of stations short at that peak; the government count on 11 October was 10% of stations short of a fuel, down from about 15% on 5 October. The cause is a price cap rather than a missing barrel — 86–91% of outages are at TotalEnergies stations, which sell below market — and GEF’s colour rule scores the retail condition, not the cause. Russia is no longer at this tier: three re-checks (17, 19 and 22 September) found no September-dated evidence of rationing, so it holds at watch despite continued refinery strikes. Tajikistan, Myanmar (QR-code quotas, last confirmed 11 September) and Burundi have since been removed from the map under the 14-day rule for lack of recent evidence.

Price stress (watch tier): Russia, where Reuters reported on 15 September that three of the six plants making roughly half of its diesel were shut or near 25% of capacity; Germany, where the PCK Schwedt refinery has lost ~17% of its feedstock since the Druzhba halt; the United States, with diesel $6.33 on 16 October (from a $6.5276 record) and distillate 12% below its five-year average; the United Kingdom, where diesel passed £2/litre at a record 200.01p on 2 October and was 199.9p on 9 October; Australia, where diesel was 281.0 c/L in the week to 7 October, 104.4 c/L above its pre-conflict level, with no rationing; and Bangladesh (which warned on 21 September it may not be able to fund October fuel imports) and the Philippines (diesel up ₱18 a litre in three weeks) on reserve and price pressure.

Every entry above is sourced and dated on the global shortage map, which applies a 14-day re-confirmation rule: a pin that cannot be re-confirmed moves down or comes off, rather than standing on stale evidence.

US diesel reached $6.5276 a gallon on 22 September, an all-time high, having first crossed $6.00 on 11 September, and eased to $6.33 by 16 October; the June 2022 post-invasion peak was $5.81 (AAA). The spread to petrol is the story: the tightness is in the middle distillates, not in crude. In the EIA’s week to 9 October US commercial crude drew 8.6 million barrels to 415.6 million, far more than expected, while distillate slipped to 102.6 million, still about 12% below its five-year average. The cause is partly a yield decision — refiners tilted toward jet fuel when aviation margins led — and partly the loss of Russian and Gulf product, arriving just as harvest demand and the heating-oil season compete for the same barrels. The EIA projects distillate stocks stay below their five-year low through much of 2027.

Policy is now part of the price. On 23 September the White House denied a reported 90-day ban on US diesel exports after it was floated in the press; Energy Secretary Chris Wright said nobody was considering a flat ban but voluntary measures had been discussed. The US is the world’s largest diesel exporter, so any restriction would move the American squeeze straight into Europe and Latin America. For the crude-side picture see the Hormuz tracker and the US oil inventories page.

US export policy. The denied 90-day ban is the first time Washington has publicly weighed restricting product exports in this crisis. Any move toward “voluntary measures” that keeps more diesel at home tightens Europe first.

Russian refining and export terminals. Strikes have moved between refineries and terminals all year. With Kinef shut and Volgograd and NORSI near 25% of capacity, the world’s second-largest diesel exporter is short of output as well as outlets.

Gulf product routes. Saudi Arabia’s East–West pipeline restarted on 22 September at a low rate, returning crude to Red Sea refineries and terminals. The status of the 400 kb/d Jazan refinery, shut on 27 July and last guided to restart on 30 August, has not been confirmed since.

The harvest and heating season. Northern Hemisphere agricultural diesel demand peaks in September and October, just ahead of heating-oil season. This is the window in which a product squeeze becomes visible at the pump.