Patrick De Haan has explained gasoline prices on American television for the better part of two decades. He is head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, where he has tracked fuel prices since 2009, and he hosts GasBuddy's Over a Barrel podcast.

Recorded Oct 6, 2026, the morning after President Trump's executive order on dyed diesel, we cover why the American gasoline buyer is the most politically powerful consumer in the world, who the swing voters at the pump really are, what the order does and does not do, and which levers the White House has left with diesel near record highs. Then the psychology: the price levels that change behavior, how far people drive to save a nickel, the $100 fill-up and what GasBuddy's payment data shows, why prices rocket up and feather down, why California pays twice the national price, and Patrick's range for gasoline and diesel this winter.

Follow Patrick: X @GasBuddyGuy · https://www.gasbuddy.com

The Commodities Show is hosted by Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101, and published with Commodity News, the free daily commodity newsletter: https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com

Nothing in this episode is investment or legal advice.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:40 Morgan explains price psychology and demand destruction
02:07 Today I'm joined by Patrick De Haan
02:45 Why the number on the sign moves
03:39 The loudest consumer in the world
05:28 Who are the swing voters at the pump?
06:56 Do gasoline prices decide elections?
09:10 Trump's dyed diesel order, explained
11:40 Diesel's invisible line item
14:30 What levers does the White House have left?
17:59 Are high oil prices now good for America?
21:17 $3, $4, $5: where behaviour changes
23:37 How far will people drive to save a nickel?
25:28 Twelve-dollar petrol in the Netherlands
26:04 Demand destruction is not a US thing, yet
27:51 The $100 fill-up
30:41 Twenty dollars at a time
32:02 Rockets and feathers
34:11 The two-to-three-day lag
34:49 Why California pays $8
38:49 Winter outlook for gasoline and diesel
39:41 Is a crude crash coming?
40:21 Where to follow Patrick
The GasBuddy and @GasBuddyGuy links must stay: the outro says "the links are in the show notes below."

Tags
The Commodities Show, Morgan Downey, Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy, gas prices, gasoline prices, diesel prices, oil prices, WTI, fuel prices, California gas prices, dyed diesel, energy, commodities, Oil 101

Free daily commodity newsletter: https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com

Every guest this year could tell you how many barrels move through the Strait of Hormuz. Steve Jermy is the first who can tell you what it would take to open it again, and why he thinks force can't do it.

Steve is a retired Royal Navy Commodore: the Falklands, the Adriatic through the Bosnia and Kosovo campaigns, carrier aviation, and Strategy Director at the British Embassy in Kabul. He wrote Strategy for Action, then crossed into offshore energy as chief executive of Celtic Sea Power. He now writes at Mor Gallos: Cornish for "sea power."

We cover: why Kharg Island is still standing · whether energy infrastructure is ever off-limits in war, what mine clearance of a strait actually involves: route survey, sweeping, and why mines get resown · why he says a military reopening is "not possible or plausible", the diplomatic path (toll-gating, Oman, the IMO) · what China understands about energy that the West doesn't and the recession math if 12-13 million barrels a day stay out of the market.

Recorded: Wednesday Sep 2 2026

Follow Steve:
Mor Gallos (Substack): https://stevejermy.substack.com/

And one of Steve's substack posts of particular interest to the US-Iran War: 'Principles & Practice of Air Defence' https://stevejermy.substack.com/p/principles-and-practice-of-air-defence

The daily Commodity News: https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com
BoxWood hedge management software: https://boxwoodapp.com

Chapters:
00:00 Cold open
00:36 Morgan explains: mines, sweeping and war-risk insurance
01:57 He brought a copy of Oil 101
02:15 Today I'm joined by Steve Jermy
02:58 34 years in the Royal Navy, then offshore energy
05:30 Why is Kharg Island still standing?
10:20 Is energy infrastructure off-limits in war?
13:53 The 1980s Tanker War precedent
16:25 Saturation attacks and a new mutual deterrence
20:25 Sunk costs: why walking away is cheaper
23:02 What China understands about energy
29:45 Pakistan as proxy diplomat
32:34 How you actually clear a strait: routes, sweeps, resown mines
38:12 "Not possible or plausible": the military verdict
40:15 Does Iran know where its own mines are?
42:23 A functioning government, not a headless regime
48:40 The Gulf states' rude awakening
51:30 The recession math: 12-13 mb/d out, GDP down 5-10%
55:53 Nukes, the theocracy, and Iran in 2031
59:24 Where to follow Steve (Mor Gallos)

This year China cut its seaborne crude oil imports roughly in half: the single biggest swing in the oil market, and probably the reason crude did not trade through $150. Everyone could see the ships. Nobody could say who gave the order.

Erica Downs has spent her career on exactly that question. She is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, and she has studied China's national oil companies from just about every vantage point that exists: energy analyst at the CIA, fellow at the Brookings Institution's China Center, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, senior research scientist in China studies at CNA, and before all of that, teaching at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing.

We open the black box. Who decides, how the decision travels, and why the answer is not one hand on one lever: refiners making commercial calls on crude quality and margins, Beijing controlling product export quotas, and an office inside the NDRC deciding whether Sinopec gets to touch the reserves. (It asked in March. It was told no.)

Also: whether the $70 rule is real or pattern matching, what 1.3 billion barrels are actually for, why a country that spent twenty years fearing its import dependence just discovered it has pricing power, and the moment the teapots were ordered to keep running while the state refiners cut.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
00:39 Morgan explains: NDRC, the NOCs, teapots and the two stockpiles
02:25 Today I'm joined by Erica Downs
03:25 From a RAND summer project to two decades on China's oil companies
04:51 Who actually gives the order in Beijing?
07:17 Why imports fell: refinery economics, not one decree
08:48 The SPR desk inside the NDRC
09:50 How a directive travels, and why China stopped publishing
12:24 Xi weighs in: the seven-year plans that reversed the production decline
15:11 Listed companies, state owners: how much autonomy do the NOCs have?
17:43 1.3 billion barrels: insurance or ammunition?
21:45 Is the $70 rule real, or are we pattern matching?
22:59 A buyer becomes the swing actor: from the Texas Railroad Commission to Beijing
26:02 Trump, Xi, and who took credit
28:54 Iran, Venezuela, and China behind the scenes
32:47 What Erica watches that almost nobody else does
35:23 How fast do these decisions actually happen?
38:20 Close

Recorded: Thursday July 30, 2026


FOLLOW ERICA
Center on Global Energy Policy: https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/

Erica Downs: https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/dr-erica-downs/

THE COMMODITIES SHOW
Daily Commodity News and more: https://boxwoodapp.com
Hosted by Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101.

Daily Commodity News
Free, every morning
https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com/news/subscribe

Bob McNally is the founder and president of Rapidan Energy Group, the Washington-based energy advisory, and the author of Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices. He served in the White House as President George W. Bush's top international energy adviser on the National Security Council.

We trace the whole arc: why oil is built for violent price swings (nobody drives laps for fun when gasoline gets cheap), how Rockefeller, and then Texas, of all places, tamed them, with armed troops in the fields and well-by-well quotas for 40 years, a third of the world's production capacity held offline in the 1950s, and how OPEC's founders learned the trade directly from the Texas Railroad Commission. Then the modern era: the 2014 crash from $100 to $26 when "a tumbleweed didn't blow down the street," why shale can never be a true swing producer, China's sudden new role as a swing BUYER, what actually panics Washington about gasoline prices (hint: it isn't $4 at the pump), the SPR at its lowest level since 1983, and why Bob believes we're in the foothills of the next oil boom.

Bob's book, Crude Volatility: https://www.amazon.com/Crude-Volatility-History-Future-Boom-Bust/dp/023117814X
Follow Rapidan: rapidanenergy.com · Rapidan and Bob on X and LinkedIn

Recorded: Thurdsay July 23, 2026

The Commodities Show is hosted by Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101 and creator of the daily Commodity News: https://boxwoodapp.com

00:00 Intro
00:39 From a mud hut in Senegal to the White House
04:59 Setting the stage: the boom-bust thesis
05:32 The 1859 price series, and why oil can't sit still
≈08:45 The quest for stability: Rockefeller tames the market
≈11:45 Texas sends in the troops: the Railroad Commission
≈14:00 OPEC learns the trade from Texas
≈15:15 2014: $100 to $26, and "nothing changed"
18:17 Can shale be the swing producer? Why not
≈22:00 Why Saudi won't do all the cutting
≈24:30 Swing producers fail in deficits, not surpluses
26:30 China: the world's first swing BUYER
28:06 Inside Washington: oblivious, or absolute panic
30:54 The SPR at its lowest since 1983, and sanctions
34:23 The next 1-3 years: the foothills of the boom
38:32 Where to follow Bob + Rapidan

David Wech is the chief economist at Vortexa, the energy-intelligence firm that tracks every crude and product cargo on the water in near-real time. Before Vortexa he spent 18 years at JBC Energy in Vienna, running research and then the firm itself.

Recorded Tuesday July 21, 2026.

We discuss what the satellites can see that the market can't: why oil-on-water called the fall to $60 months before consensus, how China cut its imports without breaking its economy, why Chinese crude inventories are 150 million barrels HIGHER than a year ago, who actually gives the orders to PetroChina and Sinopec, the record sanctioned "shadow fleet" and the new dark ship-to-ship practices through Hormuz, and why the real shortage right now is refined products, not crude — with Russian diesel exports near zero and refining margins at records.

Follow David's work: free analysis at vortexa.com and Vortexa Insights on LinkedIn.

The Commodities Show is hosted by Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101 and creator of the daily Commodity News: https://boxwoodapp.com

00:00 Intro
00:29 Morgan Explains: oil on water, going dark, the shuttle run
02:42 Meet David Wech
04:31 Oil-on-water: the indicator that called the fall to $60
05:42 Why the market ignored the oil at sea
07:44 China's import cliff: how they actually did it
12:17 China's SPR: 1.3 billion barrels, tracked from space
14:48 The surprise: Chinese stocks HIGHER than a year ago
16:01 The strategic buyer: China vs OPEC as the balancer
18:02 Who gives the orders? Beijing, the NOCs, the levers
19:13 The shadow fleet at record size + the dark shuttle run
22:15 The MOU, the drone, and what comes next
25:35 Products, not crude: record refining margins
26:44 Russia's diesel ban and the missing 900,000 b/d
29:21 "Bearish crude — if the market evolves normally"
30:36 Three routes through the Strait, and a toll to pass?
32:56 Where to follow David + Vortexa

China's seaborne crude imports have fallen from 11-12 million barrels per day to 5-6 million. Nobody announced it. The satellites saw it.

Reid I'Anson is a senior commodity economist at Kpler, the intelligence firm that tracks the physical oil market: cargoes at sea, floating storage, tankers that switch off their transponders. We get into how you actually count oil from space, China's quiet role balancing the market through the Hormuz crisis, Iran's dark fleet, why empty tankers sailing toward the Gulf are the recovery signal to watch, roughly 4 million barrels per day of demand destruction centered in Asia, how much SPR buffer is actually left, and why pipelines around the Strait all run into the same problem at Yanbu.

Recorded: Wednesday July 15, 2026

Follow Reid: https://x.com/ReidIAnson
Kpler: https://www.kpler.com

I'm Morgan Downey. I build BoxWood, hedge management software for companies with commodity price exposure, and I write the daily Commodity News.
Commodity News (free, every morning): https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com
BoxWood: https://boxwoodapp.com

This conversation is for information only. Nothing here is financial, investment, or trading advice.

00:00 Intro
00:29 Morgan Explains: counting oil from space
02:19 Meet Reid I'Anson (Kpler)
03:14 China's vanishing imports
05:48 How China cut demand: petchems, EVs, refinery runs
06:38 Counting inventories by satellite
08:44 Iran's dark fleet and the 180 million barrels
10:03 Floating storage and China's discount power
11:25 Hormuz: the three routes
12:16 The transit numbers: 15 to 1.8 to 8.5 to sub-5
14:52 Iran's storage squeeze and the ballast-tanker signal
17:19 Demand destruction and refining margins
20:20 The SPR: how much buffer is left?
22:56 SPR refills and new strategic reserves
25:43 Pipelines around Hormuz: Yanbu's problem
29:12 What Reid watches every day
31:02 Where to follow Reid

For most of its life, US natural gas was a purely domestic price. It answered American weather, American production, American supply. That is changing fast.

Today I sit down with veteran gas & LNG analyst Ira Joseph to unpack how the US export boom is turning Henry Hub into a global benchmark: why US gas trades near $3 while Europe and Asia pay $15 or more, whether cheap $3 gas is here for a decade, the data-center-versus-LNG tug of war over the same molecule, and the counterintuitive case for US producers to hedge less right now.

Ira Joseph has spent more than 30 years in natural gas and LNG. He is a Senior Research Associate at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). Before Columbia he spent two decades at PIRA Energy and then S&P Global Platts, where he was global head of gas and power analytics, and he launched PIRA's European Gas & Power and Global LNG services back in 1999, before most people called this a global market. Earlier he was editor-in-chief of World Gas Intelligence.

Follow Ira:
· X: https://x.com/Ira_Joseph
· Center on Global Energy Policy (free research): https://energypolicy.columbia.edu

More from Morgan Downey:
· Daily Commodity News + BoxWood hedge management: https://boxwoodapp.com

The Commodities Show is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and is not investment, financial, or legal advice.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:27 Morgan explains: the words in this episode
2:36 Meet Ira Joseph
4:38 Is Henry Hub still an American price, or the world's?
6:49 How much US export capacity is actually real
8:15 Is $3 gas here for a decade?
13:04 Henry Hub, TTF, JKM: how linked are they?
16:03 More global connectivity by 2030?
18:59 Why nat gas is now a geopolitics trade
20:15 Term contracts vs spot pricing
21:02 Is oil indexation dying? And who signs the contracts now
24:16 Two demand shocks, one molecule: data centers vs power burn
29:16 Competing with coal and renewables
31:17 Is US gas structurally more volatile now?
33:00 Should producers hedge more, or less?
36:13 NGLs, and where to find Ira

China quietly cut crude imports by 5 million barrels a day during the Hormuz crisis, a bigger swing than every Western SPR release combined, and said nothing. Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context and former head of commodity economics at Scotiabank, joins Morgan Downey to unpack what oil data can and can't tell us: why the world's oil balance sheet has never actually balanced, how tanker tracking exposed OPEC's worst-kept secret, the competing theories behind China's silent import cut (a backroom deal with Washington? Taiwan prep? or just buying low?), why the "Chinese collar", buyers under $70, sellers at triple digits, may make Beijing the market's new swing balancer, who's short Brent at $80 with net positioning near record lows, the unstable June 17 memorandum and the drone skirmishes since, the pipelines being built around the Strait of Hormuz, and Canada's newly announced 1 million b/d West Coast pipeline.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:26 Rory's route into oil: Kingston, the Munk School, Oil 101, Scotiabank, Commodity Context
04:59 Sniffing out geopolitical BS: "I was always a shorter of geopolitical risk"
06:15 Narratives and the law of the sea :what is Trump actually trying to achieve?
08:47 Why Tehran is not Caracas:the Maduro playbook that didn't travel
10:30 Oil's balance sheet has never balanced: missing barrels and estimate comparison
14:46 China: the black box: apparent demand, floating roof tanks, invisible product stocks
17:21 China's silent 5 million b/d import cut
18:53 The theories: backroom deal, spheres of influence, self-interest, Taiwan dry run
27:01 The "Chinese collar": buy under $70, sell at triple digits: the new swing balancer
30:43 Record Brent shorts at $80: who's actually short?
36:46 The June 17 memorandum: rushed, unstable, and the Persian Gulf Strait Authority
41:07 Pipelines around the Strait: Saudi East-West, Yanbu, ADCOP to Fujairah
42:37 Canada's new pipes: the West Coast line and the Northern Shield corridor
45:35 Where to follow Rory's work
46:31 Outro

FOLLOW RORY
Commodity Context: https://www.commoditycontext.com
X: https://x.com/Rory_Johnston
Oil Ground Up podcast: https://www.commoditycontext.com/podcast

The Commodities Show with Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101.

Morgan Downey's daily free Commodity News: https://commoditynews.morgandowney.com

After watching every oil cycle since the 1970s, Josef Schachter thinks we've just entered the third great commodity super cycle. Morgan Downey sits down with Josef Schachter of the Schachter Energy Report to make the case: why oil is bottoming near current levels, why this cycle is driven by the third-world materials build-out rather than a single country, why there's been no real demand destruction, his $80 and $90 WTI forecasts, a focus on Canadian E&P, and the framework he uses to call tops and bottoms.

Guest: Josef Schachter, Schachter Energy Report — https://schachterenergyreport.ca

Listener offer: $100 off your first year with code POD100 → https://schachterenergyreport.ca/subscriptions

The Commodities Show is hosted by Morgan Downey, author of the daily Commodity News and founder of BoxWood, the AI powered hedging platform.

Get Morgan Downey's Commodity News (free, daily): https://www.boxwoodapp.com/news

BoxWood: https://www.boxwoodapp.com

Recorded early July 2026.

Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. Do your own research and consult a licensed professional before making any decision.

#oil #oilprices #energy #commodities #oiltrading #WTI #energystocks #Canada

As markets watched Brent and WTI crude, stress from the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis showed up moreso in products: diesel, jet, and naphtha. In Episode 1 of The Commodities Show, Morgan Downey sits down with June Goh, Lead Analyst for Asia at Sparta Commodities and a former Shell refinery optimizer, to talk about the products layers above the crude price.

We get into why the Hormuz shock is really a products story, why diesel is structurally the tight part of the barrel, how China's petrochemical switch quietly took the edge off the spike, the global relocation of refining capacity, and how forward arbitrage signals move ahead of the spot market.

Guest: June Goh, Lead Analyst (Asia), Sparta Commodities
X: https://x.com/JuneGoh_Sparta
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaik-june-goh-26b42663/
Sparta Commodities: https://www.spartacommodities.com

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:28 Who June Goh is, and what Sparta does
4:06 The Hormuz shock is a products story
5:51 Naphtha, ethane, and the petchem feedstock switch
8:38 China's demand drop and the plastics question
11:50 The jet to diesel yield shift
12:25 Refining margins and the capacity cycle
14:17 No new refineries: Dangote, the Middle East, electrification
17:37 SPRs, tank farms, and the limits of satellites
21:05 Why diesel is the tight part of the barrel
23:46 Venezuela, the shadow fleet, and Iranian barrels
27:04 How Sparta reads the forward arb
29:23 Who actually uses Sparta
32:29 The only consensus: Hormuz 2.0 and diversification
34:42 Piping products around Hormuz
37:52 Where to follow June and Sparta

The Commodities Show is hosted by Morgan Downey, author of the daily Commodity News and founder of BoxWood.
Subscribe for new episodes: [your channel subscribe link, e.g. youtube.com/@morgandowney?sub_confirmation=1]
Morgan Downey's Commodity News (free, daily): https://www.boxwoodapp.com/news
BoxWood: https://www.boxwoodapp.com

Recorded late June 2026. The Strait of Hormuz situation has continued to evolve since.

#oil #refining #diesel #commodities #oiltrading #Hormuz #crudeoil #energy #Sparta