Physical Brent: U.S. EIA spot price, published weekly about a week late. Brent futures: ICE front-month daily close. Diesel crack: NY Harbor diesel against Brent, EIA spot. The dashed line marks the closure on 28 February.
The gap is the gauge
Oil you can load today against oil on a screen. When physical Brent trades $10 to $20 above the futures, supply is still tight, whatever the export estimates say.
The crude shortage is largely over: JP Morgan puts Gulf oil flows at about 98% of pre-war levels, with 40% bypassing the strait. The fuel shortage is not: refined products still move at about half of normal. That is why this panel puts the diesel crack next to the price of crude. Watch for the physical premium to close while the diesel crack stays high; that is the sign the problem has moved from the strait to the refinery, and on into inflation.
Every estimate, side by side
Dark flows are hard to verify, so the panel keeps every published estimate with its source and date, rather than picking one.
| mb/d | Who | What it counts | When |
|---|
What the screens can see
Public ship-tracking dashboards read AIS, the transponder every large ship should broadcast. Dark tankers switch it off. The gap between these counts and the barrel estimates above is the dark fleet at work.
Stress gauges
Read the analysis: The Strait Is Closed. The Oil Is Flowing. →
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA): Brent spot price and NY Harbor ULSD spot price, via FRED (St. Louis Fed); retail diesel prices, 28 September 2026.
- ICE Brent futures daily closes: TradingView market data, stored nightly by the desk.
- straits.live dashboard (AIS data and IMF PortWatch transit counts), 20 September 2026.
- Kpler satellite and AIS tracking, mid-September 2026; Reuters, citing Kpler, week of 13 September 2026.
- Goldman Sachs research note on Middle East exports, 29 September 2026; OilPrice.com report of Goldman’s Persian Gulf outflow estimate.
- JP Morgan commodities research, September 2026 and 30 September 2026.
- TotalEnergies CEO remarks, September 2026; US Treasury Secretary Bessent, September 2026.
- TankerTrackers.com dark-fleet register and strait throughput estimates.
Educational content to support your own research and decisions. Not financial advice.