US Retail Diesel Tops 2022 Record as Irving Oil Enters Autumn Turnaround
The national average exceeded the 2022 all-time record on September 3 while Canada's largest refinery, processing 300,000 barrels a day, started a two-month maintenance shutdown.
The NYMEX ULSD heating oil front-month slipped 0.59% to $5.04 a gallon in early trading on Friday (2026-09-11), a modest pullback from a week in which U.S. retail diesel prices broke into record territory for the first time since 2022.5,8,7,6
AAA data showed the national average pump price had reached $5.7832 a gallon on Thursday (2026-09-03), just three cents below the all-time record of $5.8159 set in mid-June 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and by late that day, oilprice.com reported, that record had been surpassed. Bank analysts told Rigzone that "diesel remains at the epicenter of the rally," a description that matched the week's trajectory: the average had already climbed to $5.783 a gallon on Wednesday (2026-09-02), surpassing a wartime peak struck in April 2026.6,8,5,7
Several supply constraints are converging to sustain that tightness. Irving Oil's Saint John refinery in New Brunswick, Canada's largest oil refinery with processing capacity of about 300,000 barrels a day, entered a scheduled maintenance turnaround running from early September through mid-November, according to the company's website. The northeast U.S. draws heavily on Atlantic Canada refining capacity, and this window removes a substantial volume of distillate supply precisely as the market transitions toward heating demand.3
Demand has been running hot too. GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan estimated the 2026 Labor Day weekend cost Americans roughly $1.39 billion more on gasoline than the equivalent holiday in 2025. Summer driving demand has been compressing inventories; autumn heating demand will test them further.8
The longer-running supply disruption runs through Russia. The IEA reported that Russian oil production in May fell to around 8.7 million barrels per day, about 5% below year-ago levels and approximately 10% short of that month's production target. Ukrainian attacks on refining infrastructure have pushed shortages into Russia's interior: Foreign Policy reported on July 15 (2026-07-15) that a driver in Chita, roughly 3,700 miles from the front, had spent 39 hours queuing for fuel the previous month.1,2
Despite those production cuts, Russian oil exports in May held at around 7.4 million barrels per day, with revenues of approximately $20.8 billion. Moscow has budgeted roughly 8.92 trillion roubles from oil and gas in 2026 out of total federal revenues of just over 40 trillion roubles. Running production 10% below target in May makes sustaining those export volumes an increasingly difficult fiscal arithmetic for the Kremlin.1
Not every signal is bullish. WTI crude front-month fell 0.50% to $100.50 a barrel on Friday (2026-09-11), with ICE Brent crude front-month marginally lower at $105.66 a barrel. Crude softness can weigh on refinery margins and eventually on product prices. But distillates have repeatedly diverged from crude through this cycle, sustained by product-specific supply constraints with no near-term resolution. [live prices]
The Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of the world's seaborne petroleum moves, has remained a chokepoint through the US-Iran conflict, extending the geographic scope of the supply problem well beyond any single refinery outage.4
The Irving Oil turnaround runs through mid-November. Distributors bridging the northeast supply gap, through imports, pipeline rerouting, or draws on storage, will leave a trace in weekly EIA product inventory reports over the next six to eight weeks. A string of large distillate draws from East Coast stocks is the clearest forward signal for the NYMEX ULSD front-month before cold-weather demand readings begin to arrive.3