Diesel Prices Hold Records as Russia's Ban Locks Out 10% of Seaborne Trade

The week's oil story was not the barrel. It was the two polar drivers on top of it: the White House asking the Pentagon for strike options against Iran executable before the midterms, and then, by Friday, President Trump ruling out a US attack before the 3 November elections. Crude rode that round trip up and then down. What did not come back down is diesel.

That asymmetry is the whole point of this week. The raw barrel is a dense, globally fungible commodity with enough slack in pipelines, ship-to-ship transfers and other producers' wells to absorb a headline. Middle distillates are different. Diesel and gasoil are the workhorse fuels of freight, farming, construction and backup power, and t…