There’s a quiet rule in household budgeting. The bills that hurt most are the ones you can’t negotiate.
You can shop around for car insurance and switch phone plans. You can’t haggle at the pump.
For most of 2026, that rule has been expensive. Last month was the priciest September on record for gasoline, with the monthly national average landing at $4.33 a gallon, 50 cents above the prior September high, according to AAA.
By Oct. 17, the national average was still about $4.31 a gallon, AAA noted.
Here’s the part that should really bother you. Crude oil, the raw ingredient in every gallon, got cheaper over the summer.
The average Brent closing price fell about 5.6% in the third quarter from the second, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. So where did that relief go?
ExxonMobil just answered the question in a regulatory filing. The company said on Oct. 16 that higher refining margins could add $4.5 billion to third-quarter earnings in its Energy Products segment compared with the second quarter, according to its Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Exxon plans to post full third-quarter results at about 5:30 a.m. Central time on Oct. 30.
Exxon‘s Q3 refining earnings expected to set company record
The 8-K isn’t an earnings forecast, and Exxon says so plainly. It’s a list of market and planned factors management expects to move results from one quarter to the next.
The numbers still tell a clear story. Here’s how the biggest pieces stack up against the second quarter, according to the filing:
- Refining margins in Energy Products: +$4.5 billion
- Specialty Products margins: +$500 million
- Chemical Products margins: -$600 million
- Lower crude and liquids prices in Upstream: -$1.3 billion
- Natural gas prices: +$300 million
- Lighter scheduled maintenance: +$200 million
- Estimated timing effects: -$2.5 billion, which Exxon strips out of adjusted earnings
In my read of that table, the oil-pumping side of Exxon lost $1.3 billion to cheaper crude, while the fuel-making side picked up more than three times that amount.
Analysts expect Exxon’s third-quarter refining earnings to land near $7.8 billion, which would be a company record, according to Bloomberg. BMO Capital Markets analyst Phillip Jungwirth went higher, writing that refining adjusted net income could reach $8.5 billion, Reuters reported.
Either figure would roughly double the $4.1 billion the refining business earned in the second quarter.
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Why your gas price didn’t fall with crude
A refining margin is the gap between what a refiner pays for crude and what it gets for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. When that gap widens, refiners win, and drivers cover the difference.
That gap blew out this year. The Iran war has restricted energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz, and Ukrainian strikes have knocked Russian refineries offline, Reuters reported.
Fewer working refineries means less fuel chasing the same demand. The Gulf Coast 3-2-1 crack spread, a common gauge of U.S. refining profit, rose 28% in the quarter and hit a record $72.64 a barrel on Sept. 22, Bloomberg reported.
More on fuel prices:
- Oil executives declared a fuel crisis, and diesel agrees
- Energy secretary warns diesel ban would raise gas prices
- Chevron CEO sends a strong message on oil price and the economy
I ran the math on that record. A barrel holds 42 gallons, so $72.64 a barrel works out to roughly $1.73 a gallon in gross refining margin at the peak, before refiners pay their own operating costs.
Now compare that with your own receipts. The average U.S. price for regular gasoline was $4.331 a gallon on Oct. 12, up $1.27 from a year earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration.
If you fill a 15-gallon tank once a week, that’s about $19 more per fill-up than last October. Over a year, it adds up to roughly $990.
Diesel is the fuel driving the real squeeze
Diesel moves the trucks, trains, and tractors that put food on store shelves. When it gets expensive, you pay for it in groceries and shipping fees, even if you never fill up with it.
Diesel prices were up 72% year over year in early October, compared with 39% for regular gasoline, according to a LendingTree analysis of AAA data. Retail diesel touched a record $6.53 a gallon in September, Bloomberg reported.
Related: Heating oil prices will break the bank in the Northeast this winter
Exxon is unusually well placed for that boom. It runs the largest refining system outside China, and CEO Darren Woods spent billions upgrading plants in Texas, Singapore, Belgium and the U.K. when he ran the refining business, according to Bloomberg.
Woods doesn’t expect a fast fix. “This refining challenge is going to be with the world for a while,” he said on CNBC after second-quarter results, according to The Express Tribune.
The $2.5 billion catch hiding in the fine print
Don’t assume the Oct. 30 headline will show a clean $4.5 billion jump. Exxon also flagged an estimated $2.5 billion hit from timing effects, with $1.9 billion of it landing in Energy Products.
Timing effects come from hedging. Exxon marks its financial derivatives to quarter-end prices, while the physical fuel cargoes they protect sit in inventory and don’t hit earnings until the sale closes, the filing explains.
Exxon says those gaps unwind in later quarters, which is why it leaves them out of adjusted earnings. If the reported number looks soft on Oct. 30, check the adjusted figure before you react.
There’s a recent lesson here, too. Exxon’s $4.1 billion second-quarter refining profit was its best in four years but still missed the $5.37 billion analysts expected, after maintenance limited its ability to cash in on record diesel output, Quartz reported.
How to stand on the right side of the oil refining margin
Fuel profits are also turning political. President Donald Trump complained in August that Exxon and Chevron (CVX) were earning too much, and high fuel prices pose a risk for the administration ahead of the November midterms, Reuters reported.
Refining booms don’t last forever, either. Margins swing with refinery outages, war headlines, and government stockpile releases, so today’s windfall can shrink fast.
Until it does, a few moves can soften the hit:
- Stack your fuel rewards. Grocery and warehouse-club gas programs can trim cents off every gallon, so check whether yours has changed its terms lately.
- Budget for the diesel ripple. Higher freight costs tend to surface in grocery and delivery prices months later, so pad those lines now.
- Check what you already own. Exxon is one of the largest companies in the S&P 500, so an index fund in your 401(k) likely holds a small slice of this refining windfall.
- Don’t chase one quarter. A record refining quarter says more about the past three months than about the next three years.
You can’t haggle at the pump. You can decide which side of the refining margin your money sits on.
Related: Kroger pulls a gas perk as pump prices set a September record
