{"id":441666,"date":"2026-11-06T01:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T18:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/oil-cracks-are-beginning-to-fall-and-refineries-are-pointing-to-more-normalization-441666\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T01:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T18:40:06","slug":"oil-cracks-are-beginning-to-fall-and-refineries-are-pointing-to-more-normalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/oil-cracks-are-beginning-to-fall-and-refineries-are-pointing-to-more-normalization-441666\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil cracks are beginning to fall and refineries are pointing to more normalization"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The price of oil at $89 isn’t that big of a problem for consumers or businesses. Crude has come down dramatically this week and a big part of that is expectations that Trump or Congress will find a way to open Hormuz and end the Iran war.<\/p>\n

That remains to be seen but what hasn’t changed is ultra-wide crack spreads. Normalized gasoline would be selling around $3.60-3.75 right now with diesel slightly higher with cracks around $22 (gasoline) and $30 (diesel). Because of all the refining tightness, gasoline has about a 60-cent premium and diesel at about +$2.25.<\/p>\n

That’s proven to be a big problem electorally and won’t get better so long as the wars in Ukraine and Iran continue. If anything, they will worsen in time on potentially escalated strikes from Ukraine, Iran, the USA and Houthis.<\/p>\n

From the looks of it, the prognosis is bad and winter sees higher distillate demand as well for heating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a positive sign though, the share prices of refineries are rolling over. Valero is a pure play and it’s down 22% since October 13.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

More broadly, the CRAK refiners ETF is down 16% from the October peak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In mid-October, the product tightness was extreme with $100 cracks. That’s narrowed to $77 in jet fuel and even more in distillates. Diesel cracks are at $83 coimpared to $102 in mid-October and $92 on October 23. Notably, cracks haven’t come in further in the past few days but refiners continue to fall. That could be a forward-looking indicator or market beta but it’s worth watching.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The price of oil at $89 isn’t that big of a problem for consumers or businesses. Crude has come down dramatically this week and a big part of that is expectations that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}