1. The short answer
By the gauges the industry actually tracks, parts of the diesel market were tight in September 2026, but no source used on this page documented outright unavailability at the pump or the burner in the United States, the UK, Germany, France or Spain. US distillate stocks stood 13% below their five-year average in the week to 11 September 2026, and the US diesel crack spread had already reached an all-time high of $102.20 a barrel on 17 August 2026 (EIA; dieselnet.com/OPIS). Those are signals of a squeeze, not proof that supply ran out.
Diesel, heating oil and gasoil come from the same refinery cut, called middle distillates, so a tight diesel market usually shows up in heating oil prices too. Keep the distinction: expensive means a higher price that still gets fuel delivered; unavailable means an order that cannot be filled at any price within a normal delivery window. Every figure below carries its own date, and where sources disagree, both numbers are given rather than averaged.
2. How you actually measure a shortage
Three gauges, read together, tell you whether middle distillates are genuinely tight: the deviation of stocks from their five-year average, the diesel crack spread, and net exports out of major supplying regions. US distillate inventories are published weekly by the EIA in million barrels, alongside their deviation from the rolling five-year average; ARA gasoil stocks in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub are published weekly, Thursdays at 16:15 CET, by Insights Global. Industry practice treats a deviation of roughly minus 10% or more below the five-year average as "tight."
The crack spread, the gap between the diesel or ULSD futures price and crude oil, is a separate metric: it signals how much refiners can charge to keep making diesel rather than another product, not how much crude exists. We keep the two apart on this site: this page covers the shortage as a condition, our diesel crack spread entry covers that metric on its own terms, and how many days a stock level would last at average demand is covered separately in our days of supply entry.
3. The numbers, dated
The reference price behind most Northwest European retail figures is the ARA barge price, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp quotation that continental heating oil and diesel prices track with a lag; the US market instead references NY Harbor.
| Indicator | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| US distillate stocks | 107.9 million barrels, 13% below five-year average | week to 11 Sep 2026 | EIA WPSR |
| US diesel crack spread (ULSD minus WTI) | $102.20/bbl, all-time high | 17 Aug 2026 | dieselnet.com/OPIS |
| NY Harbor ULSD futures | $5.20/gal, +16.75% month, +122.0% year | 17 Sep 2026 | Trading Economics |
| ARA gasoil stocks | 11.90 million barrels, four-year low | end Aug 2026 | IndexBox / Insights Global |
| ARA gasoil stocks, early September | 12.08 million barrels, described as mostly unchanged | 4 Sep 2026 | Engine |
| ARA gasoil stocks, mid-September | 12.32 million barrels, up about 2% on August | 14 Sep 2026 | Hellenic Shipping News |
| Gulf net diesel and gasoil exports | about 390,000 b/d, roughly a quarter of pre-war volume | Aug 2026 | IEA Oil Market Report, 11 Sep 2026 |
| US diesel/gasoil wholesale reference price | surpassed $200/bbl for the first time; wholesale benchmark, not a retail price | early Sep 2026 | IEA Oil Market Report, 11 Sep 2026 |
The two ARA figures are ten days apart, not a disagreement: 12.08 million barrels reported on 4 September 2026 and 12.32 million barrels on 14 September 2026, both tracing back to the weekly Insights Global survey. Read them as a rising series off the four-year low of 11.90 million barrels at the end of August 2026, not as two competing readings of the same week.
4. Expensive here, tighter there: why one number does not fit all
The same distillate squeeze produces different household experiences depending on region, and none of the markets covered on this page reported an inability to obtain fuel, only higher prices and, in some cases, longer waits. Germany's heating oil averaged 181.0 ct/L on 17 September 2026 on Tecson's panel and 178.66 ct/L the same day on esyoil's, a gap the two providers put down to different price-panel methodology rather than a data error; neither figure implies unavailability. In France, domestic heating oil (fioul domestique) stood at 185.3 ct/L per 1,000 litres on 17 September 2026 (prixfioul.fr), while road diesel was quoted separately at 223.2 ct/L on 28 August 2026 (bdor.fr), a reminder that these are two different products with two different price series. In Spain, heating gasoil (gasóleo C) stood at 168.7 ct/L on 17 September 2026 (calienteybarato.com), and in the UK, diesel averaged 190.72 pence a litre in the week to 14 September 2026 on the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's weekly average, reported via thrivefleet.co.uk.
In the US Northeast, the clearest household-level signal is not a stock figure but a bill: the National Energy Assistance Directors Association expects roughly 31% higher heating oil bills for winter 2026/27 (CNN, 14 September 2026). Our US diesel and heating oil prices page tracks that market in more detail. None of these figures describes a household or business unable to obtain fuel at all; that harder, government-triggered response is what our fuel rationing entry covers, and it has not been invoked in any market on this page as of this date.
Even the demand outlook behind these numbers is contested: the IEA's September 2026 Oil Market Report expects 2026 oil demand down 2.5 million barrels a day, while OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report, published the same day, 11 September 2026, expects it up 380,000 barrels a day. Both are cited because neither is settled fact, and the disagreement does not change the dated stock and crack figures above, only how the next few months should be read. The underlying product flow, how one barrel of crude becomes diesel, heating oil and gasoil at the same refining step, is explained in our middle distillates entry.
5. What this means for your heating oil or diesel bill
None of the figures on this page justify panic buying; they justify knowing your own tank level and your supplier's current delivery lead time, because that lead time, not the headline price, is usually the first thing a real squeeze changes. A tightening middle distillate market typically shows up as longer delivery windows and higher minimum order sizes well before it shows up as an outright refusal to deliver, so the practical question is not "should I stockpile" but "how many days of cover do I have, and how long is my supplier currently quoting."
Two concrete levers exist regardless of where the crack spread sits. If your usage is predictable, a fixed-price contract removes the need to time a purchase against a volatile crack spread, at the cost of giving up any short-term drop. If your usage allows some flexibility, joining a group order for heating oil with neighbours can lower the per-litre cost of a delivery without requiring you to guess the market's next move. Either way, ask your supplier for a current lead time before you decide, not after.
See what a change in diesel or heating oil costs would add to your own bill.
Run the calculator6. What a diesel shortage is not
A diesel shortage is not a crude oil shortage. Crude and middle distillates are different markets with different prices and different stock data; a tight diesel market can coexist with ample crude supply, because the bottleneck sits in refining output and distribution, not in the ground.
A second common confusion treats the diesel crack spread itself as proof of a shortage. The crack spread is the measuring instrument, covered on its own terms in our diesel crack spread entry linked above; the shortage is the condition that a rising crack, a falling stock deviation and shrinking net exports together help detect. One record crack alone, without a matching stock deficit, is a margin story, not necessarily a supply story.
The figure most often quoted out of context is the IEA's "over $200 a barrel" diesel and gasoil number from its 11 September 2026 report. That is a wholesale, US-referenced benchmark, not a retail price anywhere, and it is not directly comparable to the ARA barge price that European retail heating oil tracks, because the two sit in different regions and different points of the supply chain. Check any single price you see quoted online for its date, its region and whether it is wholesale or retail before comparing it to your own bill.