Crude futures ease after Thursday’s five-month high
Early Friday, crude futures were a little lower after a sharp Thursday rally. CNBC, writing around 0030 GMT on October 23, put Brent at $112.96 a barrel, down 21 cents, and WTI at $98.12, down 27 cents. Those are exchange futures prints in CNBC’s story. They are not the EIA spot prices in the ticker on this site. CNBC said Thursday’s session had risen about 4 percent to a five-month high, and that Brent’s settlement was the highest since May 4.
The same report tied the supply worry to Houthi attacks involving Saudi Arabia, including an Aramco evacuation in Dhahran that CNBC attributed to Reuters, a valve problem on Libya’s Hamada and Tahara fields affecting flows toward Zawiya, and a statement that Russia was ready for U.S.-mediated talks on Ukraine.
EIA’s own daily spot series, in the release dated October 21, put October 20 at $107.89 a barrel for Cushing WTI, $115.22 for Europe Brent, $5.265 a gallon for New York Harbor ultra-low sulfur diesel, and $4.832 a gallon for New York Harbor No. 2 heating oil. The ticker reads those series directly. A futures screen and a spot series can print different numbers on the same morning, which is what happened here.
Sources: CNBC, October 23, 2026; EIA WTI; EIA Brent; EIA NYH ULSD; EIA NYH heating oil.
September D4 generation moved higher
Fastmarkets, on October 22, walked through EPA’s EMTS data released October 15. September produced about 788.1 million D4 RINs from 483.0 million gallons of biomass-based diesel, roughly 10 percent more RINs than a revised August total of 716.0 million. Of the gallons, Fastmarkets put domestic renewable diesel near 294.7 million, up from 263.4 million, biodiesel near 142.0 million, and renewable jet credited as D4 down about 30 percent to about 21.6 million gallons.
On the year so far, Fastmarkets calculated net available 2026 D4 RINs at about 5.52 billion. It said that was 63.6 percent of its own 8.686-billion-RIN estimate of what the market will need after consumption adjustments. That 8.686 billion figure is Fastmarkets’ estimate. It is not the volume EPA wrote into the rule.
D4 RINs with a 2026 vintage were weaker in the week Fastmarkets described: a midpoint of 189.25 cents on October 16, compared with 215.25 cents on October 5. The October 15 midpoint was 194.75 cents, from 202.50 cents. Those are Fastmarkets assessments.
Fastmarkets also cited the National Oilseed Processors Association’s September crush report: about 196.3 million bushels of soybeans crushed, down 4.4 percent from August and the lowest in 13 months, with soybean oil stocks down 12.3 percent to about 1.05 billion pounds, the lowest since 2014.
Source: Fastmarkets, October 22, 2026.
EPA asks where to put another 770 million RINs
On October 16 the Federal Register published EPA’s proposal to add 770 million RINs to the 2026 or 2027 renewable fuel standards, or to both. EPA says that amount is 100 percent of the 2025 renewable volume obligation that small-refinery exemptions removed, beyond the 990 million RINs the agency had already projected when it set the 2026–27 rule. The notice offers two approaches: split the 770 million equally between 2026 and 2027, or place all of it in 2027. Comments are due December 4, 2026. A virtual public hearing is set for November 4, 2026. EPA also says it may extend the 2026 compliance deadline, currently March 31, 2027.
The docket is EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0505, RIN 2060-AX09. The text used here is the Federal Register document for October 16, 2026, document 2026-21155, pages 65699–65711.
Source: Federal Register full text, October 16, 2026. The Renewable Fuel Standard explainer has the 2026 and 2027 standards this proposal would amend.
September soybean oil in the Pink Sheet was $1,615 a ton
The soybean-oil figure in the ticker is a monthly average, not a daily cash print. In the World Bank Pink Sheet workbook linked from the Bank’s commodity-markets page, the column headed “Soybean oil” shows $1,615 per metric ton for September 2026. That reading was taken from the workbook on October 23. The commodity-markets page, in an update dated October 2, said the Bank’s energy price index rose 25.7 percent in September, crude oil rose 21.2 percent, and natural gas rose 15.3 percent. The page lists the next price update as November 3, 2026.
Sources: World Bank commodity markets; Pink Sheet monthly workbook.