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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 05, 2026   |   SPECIAL REPORT & ANALYSIS

EIA WEEKLY REPORT  |  DIESEL & DISTILLATES

Diesel Exports Hit a Record as U.S. Distillate Stocks Sink Further Below Normal

EIA: Distillate inventories fell 3.5 million barrels last week to 107.2 million — about 12% below the five-year average — as exports surged to an unprecedented 1.884 million barrels a day and Gulf Coast supplies drained.

Analysis  ·  August 5, 2026

The U.S. diesel market tightened again last week, and the culprit was not the refinery — it was the dock. The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Weekly Petroleum Status Report, released Wednesday, showed distillate fuel oil inventories fell 3.5 million barrels in the week ended July 31, to 107.2 million barrels, even though refiners were running at a near-peak 96.5% of capacity.

That draw pushed distillate stocks to roughly 12% below the five-year average for this time of year, a deterioration from about 10% below just one week earlier — an uncomfortable position with fall harvest, the peak season for farm diesel use, only weeks away.

The reason stocks fell in a week of heavy refinery output is on the export side of the ledger: distillate exports jumped to 1.884 million barrels per day (b/d), the highest weekly figure in EIA records going back to 2010, topping the previous high of 1.861 million set May 1 and running 22% above the same week last year. With imports at a token 99,000 b/d, the U.S. shipped out a net of nearly 1.8 million b/d of diesel and related fuels.

Table 1. Distillate fuel oil at a glance (week ended July 31, 2026)

Million barrels except as noted. Change is week-over-week. Year-ago is the week ended Aug. 1, 2025. Production year-ago total not published on a comparable basis.

Exports: a new weekly record

Diesel has become one of America’s most reliable export products. Weekly distillate exports have topped 1.5 million b/d in all but three of the past 18 weeks, and the four-week average now stands at about 1.7 million b/d — up roughly 24% from the comparable 2025 pace. Latin American demand, thin European refining capacity and wide freight economics continue to pull U.S. barrels — mostly from Gulf Coast refineries — into the world market.

Stocks: low, and getting lower at the wrong time

Distillate demand itself was firm: product supplied jumped to 3.94 million b/d for the week, and the four-week average of 3.59 million b/d runs 1.8% above a year ago. Add record exports on top of solid domestic use, and distillate output of 5.2 million b/d — down from 5.4 million the prior week — was not enough to keep inventories from sliding.

Stocks are 5.8 million barrels (4.9%) below the same week last year. Seasonally, distillate inventories normally build through late summer and early fall as refiners position for heating oil season; last week they went the other way.

The regional picture: the Gulf Coast drained

The weekly draw was almost entirely a Gulf Coast story. PADD 3 inventories plunged 5.2 million barrels — consistent with the export surge, since nearly all U.S. distillate exports load at Gulf terminals — while the East Coast (PADD 1) built 3.0 million barrels, two-thirds of that in the Lower Atlantic, as barrels moved up the coast. The Midwest (PADD 2), the region that matters most for farm diesel, was essentially flat at 28.0 million barrels.

Table 2. Distillate stocks by region (million barrels)

PADD = Petroleum Administration for Defense District. Totals may not add due to rounding.

Elsewhere in the report

Commercial crude oil stocks rose 2.5 million barrels to 407.0 million, still about 6% below the five-year average, as crude imports rebounded by 515,000 b/d to 6.2 million b/d. Gasoline inventories fell 1.6 million barrels and sit about 7% below the five-year average. Gasoline demand averaged 9.0 million b/d over four weeks, up 0.6% from a year ago, and jet fuel demand ran 3.6% above year-earlier levels. Total products supplied averaged 20.4 million b/d over the past four weeks. Refinery crude inputs of 17.2 million b/d kept utilization above 96% for another week.

Bottom line

For fuel buyers — including farmers heading into harvest — the report is a caution flag. Domestic diesel demand is growing modestly, inventories are shrinking when they should be building, and the export market is bidding hard for the same Gulf Coast barrels that normally resupply the interior. Unless refinery runs stay elevated deep into September or exports cool, a distillate cushion 12% below normal leaves diesel prices — and harvest-season basis in particular — vulnerable to any supply hiccup, from hurricane season on the Gulf Coast to an early cold snap in the Northeast.

The export boom is not free for U.S. fuel buyers — it is showing up directly in the price farmers pay. Retail on-highway diesel averaged $5.35 a gallon nationally on Aug. 3, up 3.5 cents in a week and $1.55 — about 41% — above a year ago, with the Midwest farm-belt average up 6.6 cents in a week to $5.26. Diesel futures have climbed roughly 30% since their late-June low, far outrunning crude oil, and the refining margin for turning crude into diesel is running near historic highs — the classic signal that it is diesel itself, not crude, that the world is short.

Foreign buyers are, in effect, outbidding the U.S. market for Gulf Coast barrels. With attacks having knocked out a slice of Russian refining capacity and Moscow’s diesel export ban sidelining a supplier that normally provides about 12% of the world’s diesel exports, buyers in Latin America, Europe and Turkey are paying premiums over U.S. wholesale prices big enough to cover ocean freight and still come out ahead. That arbitrage is exactly why a record 1.9 million b/d left U.S. ports last week: every cargo sails because the foreign bid, netted back to the Gulf Coast, beats the domestic one.

Until that premium narrows, U.S. farmers are competing with overseas buyers for the same gallon of Gulf Coast diesel — and the overseas bid is currently winning.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Petroleum Status Report, released Aug. 5, 2026, for the week ended July 31, 2026. Historical series from EIA weekly petroleum data.

AG POLICY & MARKETS DAILY   |   EIA WEEKLY REPORT  |  DIESEL & DISTILLATES — WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 05, 2026