Brent averaged $114 in September. EIA now puts 4Q 2026 at $105
EIA's October 6 outlook raised its Brent projection by $14 a barrel, and its weekly data show the Strategic Petroleum Reserve down to 283 million barrels.
- What happened
- The Brent crude spot price averaged $114.16 a barrel in September 2026, $23 above August, and touched $135.51 on October 2. EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook of October 6, 2026 projects $105 for the fourth quarter of 2026, $14 above its September 9 projection.
- Why
- Attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline and shut-in production in the Middle East of 4.8 million barrels a day in September have kept global inventories draining, and the US has been releasing crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cover the gap.
- The numbers that matter
- $114.16Brent spot, September 2026 monthly average (EIA, Oct 7, 2026)$105EIA's projection for Brent in 4Q 2026 (STEO, Oct 6, 2026)283.0m bblStrategic Petroleum Reserve, week ending Oct 2, 202613,979US crude production, thousand b/d, week ending Oct 2, 2026
- Why it matters
- Gasoline averaged $4.35 and diesel $6.29 a gallon in September 2026. EIA's own numbers put the 2026 gasoline average 81 cents above 2025, which is $810 a year for a household using 1,000 gallons.
- What happens nextas we saw it on 13 Oct 2026
- The next Weekly Petroleum Status Report is due Thursday, October 15, 2026; the next STEO is due November 10, 2026.
September's average was 25% above August, and EIA's projection for the fourth quarter sits below September's level but far above the summer.
| Jun 2026 | 85.4 |
|---|---|
| Jul 2026 | 83.76 |
| Aug 2026 | 91.08 |
| Sep 2026 | 114.16 |
| 4Q 2026 (EIA projection) | 105 |
The number that matters in the October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook is not the one on the cover. The cover number is Brent at $105 a barrel for the fourth quarter of 2026, EIA's projection, raised by $14 since September 9. The number underneath it is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: 282,983 thousand barrels in the week ending October 2, 2026, against 413.5 million barrels at the end of 2025. The United States has been draining its emergency stockpile at a pace EIA's own table expects to continue to 242.5 million barrels by the end of 2026.
This piece sets out what EIA published on October 6 and October 7, 2026, separates the observed figures from EIA's projections, and does the arithmetic for a household. It is not a forecast. EIA makes projections; this site reports them with their labels on.
What was observed: September was a $114 month
EIA's monthly spot price table, released October 7, 2026, shows Brent (Europe) at $114.16 for September 2026 and $91.08 for August. WTI at Cushing averaged $97.31 in September, against $83.90 in August. The same table shows the spring spike: Brent was $117.29 in April 2026 and $107.14 in May before falling to $85.40 in June and $83.76 in July.
September monthly averages: $114.16 − $97.31 = $16.85. Daily spot on October 6, 2026: Brent $125.44 − WTI $96.24 = $29.20. Inputs are from EIA's monthly and daily spot price tables, both released October 7, 2026. A gap that wide says the disruption is a seaborne one: the premium is on oil that has to travel through the Middle East, not on oil already in Oklahoma.
EIA's daily spot table shows Brent at $113.96 on September 29, $115.91 on September 30, $114.82 on October 1, $135.51 on October 2, $125.51 on October 5 and $125.44 on October 6. WTI over the same six days ran between $96.13 and $99.77. EIA's global oil page separately records a Brent daily price of $131 on September 15, 2026, after attacks on oil infrastructure and tankers, including Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, which had been carrying more than 5.0 million barrels a day of exports via Yanbu before the attacks. EIA says repairs allowed a partial resumption of flows as of September 22.
The mechanism EIA describes is shut-in production. Middle East crude shut-ins averaged 4.8 million barrels a day in September 2026, down from 5.8 million in August and a peak of 10.9 million in May. EIA says September's shut-ins were the lowest since hostilities began, and it assumes they average 4.5 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter. Global oil inventories fell by an average of 1.9 million barrels a day in the third quarter of 2026 on EIA's accounting, with a further 0.7 million a day of draws expected in the fourth quarter before a rebuild through 2027.
What EIA projects, with the label on
EIA finalised the inputs to its model on October 1, 2026. Its outlook therefore includes the 40 million barrel crude oil exchange from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve announced on September 29, 2026, but not any additional crude or products that may reach the market after the G7 leaders' statement of October 2. Everything in the table below is EIA's forecast, and the “previous” column is what the same agency said on September 9, 2026.
| Series | 2024 (actual) | 2025 (actual) | 2026 (EIA, Oct 6) | 2026 (EIA, Sep 9) | 2027 (EIA, Oct 6) | 2027 (EIA, Sep 9) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brent spot, $/bbl | 81 | 69 | 96 | 91 | 84 | 74 |
| WTI spot, $/bbl | 77 | 65 | 88 | — | 80 | — |
| US crude production, million b/d | 13.3 | 13.7 | 13.9 | — | 14.3 | — |
| Retail gasoline, $/gal | 3.31 | 3.10 | 3.91 | 3.84 | 3.56 | 3.35 |
| Retail diesel, $/gal | 3.76 | 3.66 | 5.19 | 5.07 | 4.49 | 4.40 |
| Global liquids production, million b/d | 103.2 | 106.3 | 101.1 | — | 109.6 | — |
| Global liquids consumption, million b/d | 103.1 | 104.4 | 102.4 | — | 104.6 | — |
EIA's global oil markets page states its projection for Brent at $105 a barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026, $87 in the second quarter of 2027 and $74 in the fourth quarter of 2027, with the annual 2027 average at $84. The agency attributes the higher near-term path to continued inventory draws, attacks on Saudi export infrastructure, and “extreme” tightness in diesel markets pulling crude demand up with it. Whether that path is right is not something this site can know; it is a model output with inputs frozen on October 1.
EIA lifted its 2026 Brent average by $5 (from $91 to $96) but its 2027 average by $10 (from $74 to $84). The agency's own notable-changes table prints these as +6% and +14%. An agency that expected the disruption to be short would move the near quarter and leave the following year alone. Moving the following year by more says EIA now assumes a slower rebuild of inventories, and its global production row makes the same point: 101.1 million barrels a day in 2026 against 106.3 million in 2025, with OPEC output down from 29.3 million to 23.9 million barrels a day.
The weekly data: production at a record pace, the SPR at 283 million
The Weekly Petroleum Status Report released October 7, 2026 covers the week ending October 2. These are observed (estimated) weekly figures, not projections, and they are the last before a holiday-delayed release on Thursday, October 15.
EIA's weekly stocks table for the week ending October 2, 2026 shows total motor gasoline at 204,744 thousand barrels and distillate fuel oil at 105,138 thousand barrels. Total crude and products excluding the SPR stood at 1,237,400 thousand barrels, down from 1,251,356 in the week ending September 18. Refiner crude inputs were 16,480 thousand b/d, crude imports 6,840 thousand b/d, and total products supplied, EIA's proxy for demand, 20,396 thousand b/d.
STEO Table 4a prints the SPR at 413.5 million barrels at the end of 2025. The weekly table shows 282,983 thousand barrels, which is 283.0 million, in the week ending October 2, 2026. 413.5 − 283.0 = 130.5 million barrels; 130.5 ÷ 413.5 = 31.6%. EIA's Table 4a projects the reserve at 242.5 million barrels at the end of 2026 and 345.7 million at the end of 2027, so the agency's own model has the stockpile falling a further 40 million barrels and then being refilled. Those last two figures are EIA's projections.
The weekly release also carries a re-benchmarking note: EIA's latest annual re-benchmark of production raised its weekly estimates by less than 50,000 barrels a day, about 0.36% of the week's production total. That is small, but it is why a weekly production figure read in October 2026 can differ from the same week quoted in August. Readers who want the habit of checking such things can use how to check a number is current.
What it means for your money
Crude is an input. What a household pays is the retail price of gasoline, diesel and heating oil, and those have moved further than crude in percentage terms because refining margins widened at the same time.
EIA's petroleum products page gives September 2026 averages of $4.35 per gallon for retail gasoline and $6.29 for retail diesel, both lifted by higher crude prices and wider crack spreads. EIA's projection has diesel above $6 in October 2026, easing gradually afterwards and staying above $4 through 2027, with gasoline roughly flat in October and then declining slowly with crude. EIA also says wholesale declines do not pass through to the pump immediately: retail and distribution margins were depressed in 2026 and are expected, on its model, to return above their five-year average in 2027.
EIA's table: 2026 projected gasoline $3.91, 2025 actual $3.10. $3.91 − $3.10 = $0.81 per gallon. A household buying 1,000 gallons a year (19.2 gallons a week) pays 1,000 × $0.81 = $810 more over the year. For diesel the same arithmetic is $5.19 − $3.66 = $1.53 per gallon. The 1,000-gallon figure is an illustration chosen for easy multiplication, not a measured average, and the 2026 price is EIA's projection for the full year, of which nine months are already observed.
EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook, published alongside the October STEO, says homes heated mainly by heating oil, about 3% of US households and mostly in the Northeast, face prices more than 30% above the previous winter, with expenditures up 21% after a milder-weather offset. Homes heated by natural gas or propane, about half of households, are expected to spend less than in the previous winter. East Coast distillate inventories were 32% below their five-year seasonal average in September 2026, and EIA's model keeps them around 20% below the 2021–2025 average through the coming winter.
The transmission to the wider price level is the familiar one. Energy is a component of the CPI, and the August 2026 CPI already showed 3.4% over 12 months before September's crude move had reached the pumps. The September CPI is due on October 14, 2026, and the gasoline and fuel oil lines in it are the first place the September crude average appears in an inflation statistic. How inflation feeds through from a single commodity to wages, interest rates and savings is a longer chain, and the site's piece on oil at $107 traced the earlier leg of it.
What to watch, and when
Sources
- Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026 (forecast overview and notable forecast changes)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026: Global oil marketsU.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026: Petroleum productsU.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026, Table 4a: U.S. Petroleum and Other Liquids Supply, Consumption, and InventoriesU.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Spot Prices for Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, monthly (release date Oct 7, 2026)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Spot Prices for Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, daily (release date Oct 7, 2026)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Weekly U.S. Supply Estimates (release date Oct 7, 2026, week ending Oct 2, 2026)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Weekly U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (release date Oct 7, 2026)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Short-Term Energy Outlook release schedule, 2026U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Weekly Petroleum Status Report (landing page: re-benchmarking note and Oct 15, 2026 release notice)U.S. Energy Information Administration · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- Consumer Price Index Summary — August 2026U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Sep 11, 2026 · Primary source
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