Risk Wire — 14 August 2026

Oil / Products

US drivers are paying more for fuel this late in the year than they ever have. Gasoline is selling above $4 a gallon and diesel near $5.40, against $3.16 and $3.72 twelve months ago — records for the season. More than five months after the Iran war began choking flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the US Department of Energy raised its forecasts again this week, projecting gasoline to average $4 a gallon in the third quarter and $3.72 in the fourth, with diesel still just shy of $5 by year end. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg · AAA

Risk lens: Bullish (product cracks) — an official forecast holding diesel near $5 through year end is a floor under distillate cracks. Crude flat-price hedges will keep under-performing the product exposure they were meant to cover.

Russian diesel exports have collapsed to a fraction of last year’s, and it is a refining problem, not a sanctions one. Diesel and gasoil shipments ran at about 80,000 barrels a day over the first seven days of August, against more than a million a day at the end of last year. Ukrainian drone strikes are the cause: Russian refinery runs fell to roughly 3.6 million barrels a day in July, the lowest since May 2002, with at least 25 refineries hit since August 2025. — Bloomberg · The Moscow Times · Kpler

Risk lens: Bullish (distillate) — structural supply destruction with no quick repair path, layered on Hormuz. Anyone short distillate cracks as a hedge against a crude rally is carrying the wrong leg.

Crude itself has been drifting lower, which is the part that does not fit the narrative. Brent traded around $87 a barrel on Thursday, roughly 2% lower on the day, despite no visible progress toward reopening the strait. Traders are openly disputing how much crude is actually transiting: US Energy Secretary Chris Wright put the figure near 9 million barrels a day, a number the market met with scepticism, while the IEA warns global stockpiles are drawing down fast. — CNN · Al Jazeera

Risk lens: Neutral (Brent flat price) — stock draws and higher US output are capping flat price while the chokepoint risk stays unresolved. Compressed volatility on an unhedged tail, and a poor environment for short-vol positions.

Gas & Power

Germany is going into winter with the emptiest gas stores since the energy crisis. Storage sites were about 41% full on 1 July, the lowest for that date since 2021/22, and around 47% in early August — deep into an injection season that should be well advanced. BloombergNEF puts the shortfall down to a sluggish refill that slowed further in July, leaving the country needing its strongest late-summer injections in years to reach the 76% booked level by 1 November. — Clean Energy Wire · Bloomberg

Risk lens: Bullish (winter TTF) — a low starting inventory turns any cold snap or supply interruption from a price event into a physical one. The summer/winter spread is the instrument that reprices first.

The binding constraint is economic, not physical. Germany’s infrastructure can still refill in time; what is missing is the price signal. Elevated prompt prices driven by the Middle East war, plus higher gas burn for air conditioning, have left the curve offering too little reward for injecting. EU-wide inventories sat at about 57% of capacity in early August, the lowest for that point in the year in records going back well over a decade. — European Gas Hub · Columbia CGEP

Risk lens: Bearish (summer/winter spread as it stands) — a curve that fails to fund storage economics is self-correcting, and it usually corrects violently. Expect the spread to widen to clear the market.