1. The short answer
The ARA barge price is the daily market assessment for diesel and heating oil traded at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub, and it sits between Brent crude and your invoice, which is why a Brent headline and a heating oil bill can move by very different amounts. Price agencies assess the product itself, not the crude that goes into it, and dealers in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands price their deliveries off that assessment.
On 17 September 2026, Brent closed at 104.07 USD/bbl, its third daily fall in a row (Trading Economics), while German heating oil quoted the same day at 181.0 Ct/L for a 3,000-litre order (Tecson). Neither figure converts directly into the other; several links sit in between, covered below.
2. The chain: crude, product quotation, wholesale, your bill
Four links sit between the oil well and your invoice: crude oil, the product quotation, the wholesale trade, and the retail bill, and each one adds its own cost. Refiners buy crude oil such as Brent, then turn it into diesel, heating oil and other products. Price agencies such as S&P Global Platts and Argus publish a daily assessment for the finished product at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub, called "Gasoil 0.1% FOB ARA Barges," and ICE lists futures against it, plus a "Gasoil Crack," the ARA product price minus Brent.
Dealers in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands then price heating oil and diesel off that ARA assessment, adding freight to the local terminal, national fuel tax and duty, and their own trading margin. That is why the number in the news and the number on an invoice are rarely close: the margin across the whole chain is measured separately in our crack spread glossary entry.
Our research for this page found no freely accessible, dated ARA barge assessment in US dollars per tonne; those Platts and Argus assessments sit behind subscription paywalls. What is documented and dated is the weekly ARA gasoil stock report from Insights Global, published every Thursday at 16:15 CET, and the existence of the ICE Gasoil Crack instrument itself; neither is a substitute for a daily price, but both move ahead of one.
3. The numbers at a glance
The table below keeps the crude price, the ARA storage figures and the retail prices that build on them separate, because each is measured and dated differently.
| Indicator | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent crude | 104.07 USD/bbl, third daily fall in a row | 17 Sep 2026 | Trading Economics |
| ARA gasoil stocks, end of August | 11.90 million barrels, four-year low | end of August 2026 | Reuters/Insights Global via IndexBox |
| ARA gasoil stocks, mid-September (reading 1) | about 12.08 million barrels, "practically unchanged" | September 2026 | Engine |
| ARA gasoil stocks, mid-September (reading 2) | 12.32 million barrels, +2% vs August | 14 Sep 2026 | Hellenic Shipping News |
| German heating oil, panel 1 | 181.0 Ct/L, 3,000 litres | 17 Sep 2026 | Tecson |
| German heating oil, panel 2 | 178.66 Ct/L, 3,000 litres | 17 Sep 2026 | esyoil |
| French heating oil | 185.3 Ct/L, 1,000 litres | 17 Sep 2026 | prixfioul.fr |
The two mid-September stock readings are not averaged here because they likely reference different weekly snapshots or rounding within the same underlying Insights Global survey; both are reported as they stand.
4. ARA price versus ARA stocks: the mix-up to avoid
The ARA barge price and the ARA storage figures answer two different questions, and treating one as a stand-in for the other is the most common mistake around this term. The barge price is the market rate for the finished product at the hub; the storage figures, published weekly by Insights Global, are a physical quantity of gasoil sitting in tanks. The two move together, since falling stocks tend to push the quoted price up, but neither is measured the same way as the other.
How a squeezed distillate market shows up more broadly, in delivery times and minimum order sizes rather than just in stock charts, is the subject of our diesel shortage glossary entry. How a move in the underlying price eventually lands on a household bill, rather than staying stuck at the wholesale level, is explained separately in our pass-through effect glossary entry.
5. What this means while you wait for a good time to buy
If you are waiting for a good moment to order, the daily Brent headline is the wrong number to watch, largely because a freely accessible daily ARA price does not exist for you to check either. The number that actually reaches your invoice is your own market's retail heating oil quote, itself already built on the ARA assessment plus freight, tax and margin; watching that quote directly is more useful than trying to reverse-engineer it from a crude headline.
A second, slower-moving signal is the weekly ARA gasoil stock report: stocks near a multi-year low, as in August 2026, tend to precede a firmer quotation, while rebuilding stocks tend to ease it. Neither figure tells you where the price goes next, and this page makes no such forecast. Households in the United States, where a different hub and different taxes apply, can see the equivalent chain on our US diesel and heating oil prices page.
Run your own numbers, rather than a single day's crude quote, through our energy cost calculator to see what a change in the retail heating oil price would mean for your bill.
See what a change in retail heating oil, not Brent, would mean for your bill.
Open the calculator6. What ARA does not mean
ARA is not a price forecast, and it is not the same figure as Brent, the crack spread or the pass-through effect, even though all four turn up in the same conversation. Brent prices crude oil; ARA prices the finished product at the hub; the margin between the two is the crack spread; and how that margin eventually reaches a household bill is the pass-through effect. Treating any one of these as interchangeable with another is the error most searches around this term are trying to fix. UK households, for reference, price kerosene and diesel off different regional assessments, not the ARA barge market directly.
A second misconception is assuming a day count for European product stocks is available; our days of supply glossary entry explains why no dated figure in days exists for this market yet, only the barrel figures above. A refinery running close to its ceiling can also tighten the ARA quotation, a link our refinery utilisation glossary entry covers in more detail, but running near capacity is a separate measurement from the ARA price itself.