The Barrel Fell. The Pump Didn’t.
The Beam · June 18, 2026
Crude rolled over. Your tank didn’t get the memo.
West Texas Intermediate ran from $57 in January to almost $115 by April. Then it rolled back over, and it sits near $85 today. The market exhaled. Crisis averted, energy normalizing, nothing to see here.
Except the pump never normalized. Gasoline is still $4.05 a gallon, a few cents off its May high, while crude has given back a quarter of its peak. The barrel and the pump have come unstuck, and that gap is the whole story. We think the market is grading the wrong number.
