Goldman Doubles Diesel Crack Forecasts as Gulf Product Exports Remain at 40% of Pre-War Levels
Persian Gulf crude flows have partially recovered, but product shipments lag well behind, driving a diesel squeeze that crude benchmarks have yet to fully reflect.
Saxo Bank commodities strategist Ole Hansen wrote on Monday (2026-09-07) that crude prices below $100 "mask deeper energy stress" — a warning the diesel market had already been making for weeks. ICE Brent front-month was trading at $101.95 a barrel on September 9, above that threshold. Goldman Sachs and other analysts have argued since late July that headline crude prices understate the strain running through global refined product markets as Middle East hostilities damage refining infrastructure on a scale the crude benchmarks do not capture.6
Goldman stepped up its warnings on August 31 (2026-08-31), more than doubling its forecasts for diesel crack spreads, citing rising strikes on refineries in the Middle East and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. Global refining throughput slumped by as much as 6.5 million barrels per day against July 2025 levels, the bank estimated, driven by lower Chinese run rates compounded by outages across the Middle East and Russia.5,4
The diesel shortfall was sharper still. Global diesel exports dropped roughly 35% in July, or 2.6 million barrels per day, according to Goldman Sachs estimates. U.S. wholesale diesel futures jumped 26% through the same month — a move that ran well ahead of crude benchmarks over the same period.4,3
The divergence between crude and product flows out of the Persian Gulf is where the supply picture sharpens. Goldman analysts said in their late-August note that while crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf had partially recovered to between 70% and 80% of pre-war volumes, shipments of refined products were still at only 40%. Refineries require longer to restart than shipping lanes.5
Crude markets got a sharp illustration of that asymmetry in late June. ICE Brent front-month fell 2%, to $73.73 a barrel, on Friday (2026-06-26), as Hormuz traffic reached its highest volume since February following a 60-day U.S. sanctions waiver on Iran. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed that at least 20 million barrels of crude cleared the strait in a single 24-hour window. Crude traders sold the news. Product supply did not recover at the same pace.1
Rory Johnston, speaking on the MacroVoices podcast, noted that physical crude prices had dropped below futures after the Hormuz reopening, producing contango in the prompt spread — a sign of crude surplus rather than scarcity. "Too much crude, not enough demand," Johnston said. Diesel was operating under different conditions entirely.2
Asian refiners outside China were still running at approximately 80% capacity rates through late July but were expected to cut run rates by end-August as the delayed impact of disrupted Middle Eastern crude deliveries filtered through. June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, said that Asian refineries had already been supplied for two months and had limited appetite for additional crude — a point that illustrated how the crude glut and the product shortage were running simultaneously in the same region.3,1
IEA executive director Fatih Birol issued a public warning during the week of July 20 (2026-07-20), saying there was "no room for complacency on oil security" given the escalation in hostilities and a continuing drawdown of commercial inventories. The statement was unusually direct from an agency that generally lets its monthly publications carry that weight.3
HSBC analysts, in a note published Wednesday (2026-09-09), significantly raised their oil price forecasts while flagging that the market could shift to a surplus exceeding 3 million barrels per day in 2027 and that ICE Brent front-month could fall to the $70s by the first quarter of 2028. The long-run bearish view depends on supply normalization. But Goldman's August data — Persian Gulf product exports at 40% of pre-war levels against 70% to 80% for crude — shows how far refinery recovery still has to travel before diesel markets feel the same relief that crude traders priced in when Hormuz reopened.6,5