Crude oil prices are back up, hovering around US$90 a barrel. <\/p>\n
Diesel has skyrocketed, with Reuters reporting that the US diesel crack, a key measure of refining profitability, hit an all-time high of US$102.20 a barrel on Monday (local time). Before the war, hovered around US$15 and US$35 per barrel. <\/p>\n
Global diesel stockpiles have been under immense preassure, particularly due to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Speaking to BNZ Business Breakfast, Pickering Energy Partners founder and chief investment officer Dan Pickering said that while oil prices were high, “diesel prices are really high”. <\/p>\n
He said multiple countries had experienced outages in refining capacity \u2013 particularly in the Middle East, Russia, and China. <\/p>\n
Pickering said the price increase for diesel had been “even more significant than the rise in oil prices”.<\/p>\n
“That’s also going to matter because diesel moves a lot of goods around the world,” he said. <\/p>\n
‘This is going to take a while to resolve’<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-pck-petroleum-refinery-in-germany-2TW463QJ3ZDDTKXLIH6TBRUJCA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The PCK petroleum refinery in Germany (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
The oil market has been volatile since the US and Israel first launched attacks on Iran in February. At the centre of the conflict is the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for oil exports from the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Pickering said that while some vessels were getting out, “we’re still seeing a reduction in the amount of oil available to the market”.<\/p>\n
“Off their recent lows, we’ve seen quite a rally back up to the Brent $90 barrel range. And I think we’re going to be around this level for a while. <\/p>\n
“This is going to take a while to resolve, and inventories globally are starting to get tight.” <\/p>\n
For the US market, oil and diesel prices were likely to “sneak into” higher inflation numbers, potentially impacting interest rates. <\/p>\n
Pickering said the big thing to watch was how much traffic was going through the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
“I think we watch this refining capacity to our prior point, and then we see if there’s any change in tone around whether we’re actually moving to a peace deal as opposed to sort of this interminable squabble.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief of a US energy investment firm says diesel prices have been “really high” and need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,219,1667,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-573464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}