Argus Media assessed West Mediterranean diesel cracks at $91.67 a barrel on Thursday 30 July, after a peak near $95 on Wednesday 29 July, with the ARA fob crack at $85.86 and the Med-to-northwest-Europe premium at $33.50 a tonne, a three-month high1. A crack is the refining margin between a product and the crude it is made from, quoted here against dated Brent. Argus is one of the independent price-reporting agencies whose published assessments settle physical European gasoil contracts, which makes this a contracted number rather than a screen quote.
The print clears $60.17, the record this desk logged on 8 July, by more than $30, and it carries the same move further than the $80 US diesel crack over WTI reported on 9 July. ARA, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp barge and storage hub that prices Northwest Europe, sits close to $6 a barrel below the Med assessment. Two European refining regions running on the same crude complex do not normally separate by that much, and the $33.50 premium, roughly $4.50 a barrel on gasoil, is where the divergence shows up in a tonne-quoted market.
The separation points at the corridor rather than at the refineries. Mediterranean refiners lean far harder on Red Sea supply routes than their northwest European counterparts do, so a disruption on that corridor reaches Lavera and Augusta before it reaches Rotterdam. Argus attributes the widening to that supply tightening rather than to demand2. A product trading desk should read this as meaning Med-versus-ARA, not the outright crack, is now carrying the geography risk, and the fob-versus-delivered decision on a Med cargo has become a view on a shipping route.
