Energy & Commodities · live
Refining margin 3-2-1
How much a refinery makes turning crude into gasoline and diesel.
64.04 USD/bbl
+18.7% vs Trailing 90-day mean
Observed: Aug 11, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC · Source publishes T+1 to T+2 business days.
Interactive chart · hover for date + value · dashed = Trailing 90-day mean
▲ +37.88% in windown=12
value · USD/bblTrailing 90-day meanMay 26, 2026 → Aug 11, 2026
Translation
The *3-2-1 crack spread* — theoretical profit from processing 3 barrels of crude into 2 gasoline + 1 diesel — measures refinery margin. Wide = refiners minting money (bullish for VLO, MPC). Tight = throughput cuts loom.
Methodology
- Source
- CME settlements (WTI, RBOB, ULSD) via EIA price series
- Cadence
- Daily
- Sensors / APIs
- EIA Petroleum Spot Prices, CME settlements
- Baseline
- Trailing 90-day mean
- Uncertainty
- Settlement-to-settlement; intraday slippage not captured
- Known biases
- US-centric (RBOB, HO) — not the only refining benchmark
- Doesn't price scheduled turnarounds
Provenance
- Source URL
- https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
- License
- US Government — public domain
For developers and AI agents
- /signals/crack-spread-321/brief.md — LLM-citable markdown
- /api/signals/crack-spread-321 — JSON + JSON-LD Dataset