Why has WTI crude climbed 20.1% over the past month?

WTI closed the month at 83.16, up 20.1% over the past thirty days. A move that size raises fuel costs within a week, so a jobber has a fair question: what pushed it, and is the push over.

The first number to check was the range, not the change. WTI's 30-day high was 112.95 and its low was 68.25. It is now 83.16. So the month was not a steady climb. Crude ran up hard, touched the low hundreds, and has since given back most of that gain, landing well below its high for the period. The 20.1% figure measures where it started against where it is now, and it hides a round trip in the middle. Anyone who priced product off the peak was pricing off a number that did not last.

The wire explains the peak. Reporting through the month tied the run-up to U.S.-Iran tensions and U.S. strikes, then tied the retreat to a pause in those strikes and Tehran signaling it would halt retaliation. One report had Brent dropping toward $90 in Asian trade on the de-escalation, and a Rigzone headline had Brent and WTI both down over 5 percent. Brent finished the month at 89.25, up 22.9%, with its own high at 118.35. So the two crude benchmarks moved together, up on the risk premium and back down as the risk eased. The premium was real while it lasted and it is coming out now.

If crude were the whole story, products would have tracked it. They did not track it evenly. ULSD diesel futures are at 4.036, up 30.1% over the month, with a high of 4.496. Diesel outran crude. RBOB gasoline is at 3.135, up 11.0%, with a high of 3.772. Gasoline lagged crude by a wide margin. Same barrel of oil, three different stories at the pump, and the spread between them is where the month actually happened.

Diesel rising faster than crude points at refining, not just at the risk premium. The wire carried a run of supply hits on the product side. Lightning triggered an upset at the Phillips 66 Sweeny refinery on the Gulf Coast. Ukrainian drone strikes sparked a fire at Russia's Tyumen refinery, and Ukraine's SSU reported striking a number of refineries and airfields across Russia and occupied Crimea over the past week. Refinery outages tighten product before they tighten crude, and they tighten the middle of the barrel first. Diesel up 30.1% against crude up 20.1% fits that. Gasoline up only 11.0% fits it too, since a gasoline barrel was less exposed to the disruptions in play.

The crack spread confirms the refiners had a good month. The 3:2:1 is 61.14, up 7.81 over the thirty days. When products rise faster than the crude that makes them, the refiner's take per barrel widens, and it widened by 7.81. For a refiner that kept its units running while others tripped offline, that is a margin earned in a tight market, and it is worth reporting plainly as one. The refiners who stayed up got paid for staying up.

Diesel retailers went the other way. Their retail-wholesale spread is 1.015, down 0.724 over the month, and it compressed hard while wholesale diesel was climbing 30.1%. Street prices did not keep pace with the rack, so the diesel retailer absorbed part of the run-up rather than passing all of it through. The barrel got more expensive for a fuel retailer and the room to mark it up got smaller at the same time. Refiners earned the widening crack; retailers carried the wholesale increase without full relief at the pump. Both are real, and both sit inside the same 20.1% headline.

Natural gas ran on its own track and mostly the opposite way. Henry Hub is 2.789, down 14.9% over the month, with storage at 99.776, up 10.8%. European gas plunged 8.6% at the Amsterdam open on the same de-escalation news that took the risk premium out of oil. So the geopolitics that lifted crude did not lift gas; gas fell as storage built. Anyone whose costs lean on gas got the better end of this month than anyone whose costs lean on diesel.

So the honest answer to why WTI is up 20.1%: most of it was a risk premium from the Iran tensions and the U.S. strikes, and that premium is already draining out, which is why crude is far below its 112.95 high. What is left is a products market, diesel especially, held up by refinery outages on two continents rather than by the barrel itself. That second piece is the one that matters more to a fuel operator, because it can persist after the geopolitical premium is gone. Whether it does depends on how fast Sweeny and the hit Russian units come back, which I cannot call from here.

What I would act on: the crude headline overstates the crude story. The cost pressure that is likely to stick is in diesel and in the crack, and it may ease as refining capacity returns. I would watch the diesel retail-wholesale spread, now 1.015, as the tell for whether pump prices are catching up to the rack or the retailer keeps eating the gap.

And that was just the data. See you tomorrow.