Research/Research note

Diesel margins almost tripled. Here is which energy ETFs hold the refiners.

StoryVector · Assets as of October 12, 2026 · Top 25 holdings as published, read October 12

The margin refiners earn on diesel, the crack spread, almost tripled from a year earlier in the third quarter. In the 36 oil and gas ETFs we track, refiners are $10.2bn of $93bn, about 11%. One ETF is built around them.

What is being compared

The 36 US-listed ETFs in StoryVector's Geopolitical supply narrative whose own filing states an oil and gas equity mandate: broad energy, exploration and production, oil services, refiners, natural gas producers and midstream. Together they hold $93bn. Each fund's placement was checked against its prospectus.

A refiner here is one of eight US-listed refining companies: Marathon Petroleum, Valero, Phillips 66, HF Sinclair, PBF Energy, Delek US, Par Pacific and CVR Energy. CRAK, which tracks refiners worldwide, is counted whole.

Why refiners, why now

US refineries ran at 95% of capacity in the third quarter and processed the most crude for a third quarter since 2019, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The diesel crack spread, the wholesale price of diesel in New York Harbor less the price of Brent crude, almost tripled from a year earlier and was the highest of the three main fuels; jet fuel's also almost tripled. The name comes from cracking, the refinery process that breaks crude into fuels. Refining disruptions in Russia, China and the Middle East, which supply large shares of the world's diesel and jet fuel, have tightened global supplies.

On EIA's weekly prices, the diesel crack spread averaged $86 a barrel in the third quarter of 2026, against $31 a year earlier. Crude rose too: Brent averaged about $71 a barrel in the last week of February, about $124 in early April and $120 in the week to October 2. Diesel rose faster than crude, which is what widened the spread.

So which ETFs hold the refiners? The chart ranks all 36 by how much of each fund is refining companies, from its top 25 holdings.

Four kinds of energy ETF

The refiner ETF. CRAK, VanEck Oil Refiners, tracks an index of refining companies in the US and abroad: a company must earn at least half its revenue from refining to enter it. Fittingly, its ticker is CRAK. It has $0.7bn.

Exploration and production ETFs that include refiners by design. IEO is 35% refiners, PXE 34% and XOP 20%. For XOP and IEO this is in their index rules: XOP's index takes the Integrated Oil & Gas, Oil & Gas Exploration & Production and Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing sub-industries, and IEO's index covers companies in "exploration for and drilling, production, refining, and supply of oil and gas products", in their prospectuses' words. PXI, which chooses energy stocks by their recent price performance, is 24% refiners.

Broad energy ETFs, about one-seventh refiners. XLE, IYE, FENY, RSPG and VDE hold Marathon, Valero and Phillips 66 at 12% to 15%. Because XLE is so large, its 15% comes to $5.8bn, 57% of all the refiner dollars in this group.

17 ETFs hold none. Most are pipeline and midstream funds, oil services funds and natural gas producer funds.

Has it shown up in returns?

So far, yes. This year, through Friday, October 9, the more of an ETF that is refiners, the better it has done. CRAK returned 77% including dividends. The 4 ETFs that are 20% to 35% refiners returned a median 54%, and the 16 with no refiners 25%. The S&P 500 returned 15%. Since February 27, just before crude jumped, CRAK is up 48% while the oil services and midstream ETFs range from a loss of 6% to a gain of 12%.

Two cautions. This is one unusual year, and every energy fund rose with crude, so refiner share is not the only thing at work. And about two-thirds of CRAK is refiners outside the US (as of September 30), so it does not move with US refiners alone.

Notes and method

Peer group: the 36 ETFs in StoryVector's Geopolitical supply narrative whose prospectus, as read by StoryVector, states an oil and gas equity mandate. Not included: futures funds, exchange-traded notes, leveraged and inverse products and option-income products, because none of them owns refining companies directly; broad natural resources funds; three funds whose holdings cannot be measured from what they publish; and PBOG, an oil and gas ETF whose prospectus we have not yet been able to read.

Refiner share: the sum of the weights of the eight refining companies named above, from each fund's top 25 holdings as published, read October 12, 2026, so a fund with many small refiner positions may hold slightly more than shown. Each refiner is counted whole, although some have other businesses: Phillips 66 also runs pipelines and owns half of a chemicals business, CVR Energy makes fertilizer. Holdings dates differ by issuer: most are October 8 to 11, Vanguard's VDE is August 31 and Cohen & Steers' CSEN is June 30. Refiner dollars: refiner share times assets, from StoryVector records as of October 12, 2026. Index descriptions: XOP summary prospectus (2020), IEO summary prospectus (2017), CRAK summary prospectus (2026).

Market figures: US Energy Information Administration, Today in Energy (October 5, 2026), and weekly spot prices for New York Harbor ultra-low sulfur diesel, Brent and WTI, and the US retail diesel price, through the week of October 2, 2026. Diesel crack spread: the diesel spot price times 42 gallons less the Brent price, per barrel.

Returns: total return from daily market prices and distributions, December 31, 2025 or February 27, 2026 to Friday, October 9, 2026; CSEN and OILT lack a full price history and are left out. These are market-price returns, not the returns each issuer reports. Returns are history, not a forecast, and nothing in this note is a view on where refining margins or these funds go next.