West Coast Fuels Outlooks

Supply, demand, price, and refining margin forecasts for PADD 5 fuels markets, built by the firm that has specialized in it for decades.

West Coast forecasts require a different approach

Every major fuels decision – whether it is a terminal acquisition, refinery investment, supply agreement, or a trading position – rests on a view of where supply, demand, prices, and margins are heading. And this market is changing fast. Fuel policies are reshaping demand, electric vehicle adoption is shifting gasoline’s trajectory, refinery closures are tightening supply, and proposed pipeline capacity could redraw how barrels reach mainland PADD 5. In one of the most isolated and volatile fuels markets in the world, the usual shortcut of projecting trends, breaks down fast.

Stillwater’s West Coast Fuels Outlooks provide forecasts grounded in the physical reality of the markets. The Supply & Demand Outlook maps where the barrels are going. The Price & Margin Outlook translates those balances into forward prices and refining margins, broken out by product and by market. Together, they are two halves of one picture.

Why Stillwater’s Outlooks work

Deep on the West Coast

Global forecasters cover the world in broad strokes. We dive deep on PADD 5 (excluding Hawaii and Alaska): gasoline, jet, and diesel across Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest, and the inland desert markets of Arizona and Nevada. We have specialized in these markets for decades.

The full picture in one place

Supply, demand, prices, refining margins, and
carbon market outlooks, all from one firm. It is rare to
find deep insights concerning volumes, economics,
and regulation under one roof.

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Policy expertise built in

State climate policies shape PADD 5 fuels markets, and Stillwater is known for understanding them. Our outlooks for state low-carbon fuel programs, Cap-and-Invest, and EV adoption policies are directly incorporated into our West Coast Fuels Outlooks through our policy expertise, not bolted on as raw data run through a model.

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Grounded in supply and demand

Prices follow balances. Our forecasts are tied to whether each market is balanced, long, or short, and to whether each is importing, exporting, or pricing off a neighboring market.

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Made for your models

You receive forecast outputs and the key considerations behind them, ready to drop into project economics, asset valuations, and commercial cases, rather than a black box you have to reverse-engineer.

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Scenario testing built in

The future isn’t certain, so we model more than one scenario.

What is the West Coast crack spread?

A crack spread is an indicator of refining economics based on the difference between the value of refined products and the crude oil used to produce them. Stillwater uses a 4-2-1-1 margin representing four barrels of crude refined into two barrels of gasoline, one barrel of jet fuel, and one barrel of diesel. Our West Coast crack spread provides a clear, high-level view of where refining margins may be headed and offers a simple introduction to the analysis contained in the full Outlooks.

In the adjacent chart you can see our indicator margin forecast for the Los Angeles Market, indexed to a 2030 case where refineries earn 10% return on capital employed (ROCE).

Explore What’s Driving Refining Margins

Los Angeles Refining Indicator Margin (4-2-1-1), 2030–2040. Index: 2030 10% refinery ROCE = 100.

Stillwater’s Los Angeles indicator margin forecast shows how refining economics could diverge under different West Coast market conditions. Continued refinery rationalization produces the highest indicator margins, while a market that remains long refined products produces substantially lower margins. The balanced gasoline case tracks above the 10% refinery ROCE reference case through 2040.

Product Features

The West Coast Fuels Outlooks give you a complete forward view of the market. The Supply & Demand Outlook maps how each regional market balances, and the Price & Margin Outlook translates those balances into forward prices and refining margins. Explore what each Outlook delivers below.

Supply & Demand Outlook: Understand How Regional Markets Balance

The volume picture. Forward supply and demand balances for refined products across the West Coast and inland desert markets through 2040.

Forward balances for gasoline, jet, and diesel across Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, and Nevada, showing whether each regional market runs long, short, or balanced and how that changes over the forecast period.

Where the barrels come from and where they go: production, imports, exports, and the inter-market movements that keep each regional market supplied.

A base case plus a Western Gateway Pipeline scenario, showing how proposed inbound pipeline capacity could reshape regional supply and demand.

Price & Margin Outlook: See What the Balances Mean for the Bottom Line

The commercial picture. Forward spot prices and refining margins through 2040, built directly from the regional balances.

Forward spot prices for gasoline, covering CARBOB, RBOB, CBOB, AZRBOB, regular, and premium, plus jet and diesel across Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest, and the inland desert markets.

Forward refining margins by market, driven by the same supply and demand balances that shape the price forecasts.

A 4-2-1-1 crack-spread-style summary of West Coast refining economics: the clearest high-level read on where margins are heading.

Every price reflects the state of its market. Forecasts account for whether each market is long, short, or balanced, and whether it is importing, exporting, or pricing off a neighboring market.

Delivered Together: Two Outlooks, One Combined View

The Supply & Demand Outlook gives you the volume picture. The Price & Margin Outlook gives you the commercial picture. They are built from complementary models and delivered in matching formats, so the results combine cleanly for economics, valuation, strategic planning, and commercial analysis. Most clients purchase them together, often as part of a larger consulting engagement, because each adds context and value to the other.

Each Outlook is presented as a PowerPoint deck produced for you from Stillwater's maintained models, with recent historical data and forecasts in five-year intervals through 2040.

Numerical outputs ready to drop into your own economics, valuation, and commercial work, rather than a black box you have to reverse-engineer.

Every forecast comes with the analysis behind it, so you understand the drivers, not just the numbers.

Each Outlook includes a Q&A session with the Stillwater team behind the analysis.

Additional sensitivity testing and wholesale and marketing margin analysis are available through companion consulting engagements.

How clients put the Outlooks to work

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Turn our outlooks into your advantage.

We’ve specialized in West Coast markets for decades. Connect with Our Team.

Our Outlooks are built for corporate development, strategy, and commercial teams at refiners, distributors, traders, fuel consumers and other companies whose decisions ride on these markets:

Project assessment and refinery or infrastructure investment cases.
Terminal and asset acquisitions and valuations.
Trading and commercial positioning.
Supply planning as policy, pipeline, and demand conditions shift.
Benchmarking internal price views against an independent outlook.

Even teams with their own internal forecasts use an outside view to test their assumptions and see where they sit against an independent read of the market.

Why Stillwater?

Stillwater Associates is a transportation fuels consulting firm built on decades of experience in West Coast downstream markets. We are known as the West Coast policy expert, and we offer a full stack of outlooks, covering supply, demand, prices, margins, and carbon markets. The people behind our Outlooks have built projects and moved barrels; they bring that operating and strategic perspective to every forecast. We see things others miss.

Plenty of forecasts come from people who have never had to act on one. Ours come from people who have.

Featured experts

Meir Hasbani, Senior Associate

17+ years in conventional, renewable and carbon price forecasting, refining, crude production, biofuels manufacturing, and decarbonization strategy | Former Chevron West Coast and Rocky Mountains strategy lead | Certified Lead LCFS Verifier in California | U.S. patent holder | Primary author of Stillwater’s Price & Margin Outlook

West Coast Fuels Value: Meir brings his background in working on West Coast and Rocky Mountains refining, marketing, carbon and renewables strategy into developing Stillwater’s Price and Margin Outlook. His expertise spans the full value chain from wells to wheels, and as a certified Lead LCFS Verifier, he pairs technical depth with rare regulatory fluency in the policies that shape West Coast fuel economics. Meir began his career as a process engineer and holds a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. Stillwater’s clients get a price forecast built by someone with hands on experience in the full value chain.

Read Meir’s bio.

Chuck LeTavec, Senior Associate

35+ years of West Coast refining, logistics, and supply chain leadership | Delivered $500M+ in commercial value through crude supply strategy, refinery optimization, and capital project execution | Expert in transportation fuels strategy, SAF/RD, and regulatory transition

West Coast Fuels Value:Chuck brings three decades of ground-level experience shaping West Coast fuels markets. As Appraisal Manager at BP, he led $2+ billion SAF and RD initiatives alongside other major capital projects. Earlier, as Crude Supply & Optimization Manager and Strategist at the Cherry Point Refinery, he built out crude-by-rail logistics, led the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion commitment, and delivered refinery margin improvement. Across his career, he has navigated the West Coast’s evolving regulatory landscape, from low-carbon fuel programs to environmental permitting. Chuck offers Stillwater’s clients a trusted, insider’s read on the supply-demand forces driving the West Coast fuels market.

Read Chuck’s bio.

Vaughn Hulleman, Senior Associate

30+ years addressing strategic challenges across the oil industry value chain | Began in oil exploration and corporate planning at ExxonMobil | Two decades in strategy and business transformation consulting with leading global consultancies | CFA charterholder

West Coast Fuels Value: Vaughn leads the development of the Supply & Demand Outlook, drawing on experience from multiple Stillwater client engagements focused on market fundamentals. Since joining Stillwater in 2014, he has led over twenty engagements across the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions and Corporate Strategy service lines, advising on refinery transactions, midstream infrastructure acquisitions, and market-entry assessments. He ensures that supply-demand fundamentals and market-issues analysis reflect clients’ strategic imperatives and funders’ requirements. Vaughn holds a BSc in Geophysics and a Master of Economics.

Read Vaughn’s bio.

Rick Penfield, Senior Associate

40+ years supply chain planning and analytics | Diverse international experience across ExxonMobil | analyzed crude oil and NGL markets, pricing, and economics | Conducted structured decision analysis

West Coast Fuels Value: Rick has spent his career developing and using tools and economic models to optimize hydrocarbon supply chains from well head to refinery and from refinery to terminal. He has leveraged his broad experience to review and test the Price and Margin Outlook to ensure that it is fit for purpose.

Read Rick’s bio.

Gordon Schremp, Senior Associate

32 years with the California Energy Commission (CEC) | Senior fuels specialist advising the Governor’s Office, Legislature, and state agencies | Principal author of the CEC’s transportation fuels market assessment and outlook | Expert in fuel supply balances, refinery operations, and supply disruption analysis

West Coast Fuels Value: Gordon supports the Supply & Demand Outlook with a career spent doing this work for the State of California. Over 32 years at the CEC, he developed fuel supply balances, assessed California’s petroleum infrastructure for constraints that could impede supply over five-year horizons, and served as principal author of the transportation fuels market assessment and outlook that fed the state’s biennial Integrated Energy Policy Report. He was the analyst public officials and media turned to when refinery outages or infrastructure disruptions hit, dissecting the causes and impacts of supply shocks in real time, and most recently served as the state’s technical lead for emergency transportation fuels planning with the California Office of Emergency Services. Gordon holds a BS in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning, with an emphasis in energy, from the University of California, Davis.

Read Gordon’s bio.

Adam Schubert, Senior Associate

39+ years fuels, refining & regulatory strategy | Former BP/ARCO Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Manager, Butamax Advanced Biofuels | West Coast Refinery volume planning, biofuels commercialization, RFS/LCFS regulatory analysis, and transfer pricing strategy | Lead developer for Stillwater’s RFS RIN and LCFS credit price outlooks.

West Coast Fuels Value: Adam has spent his career at the intersection of refining operations, market strategy, and regulatory policy – from volume planning and transfer pricing at ARCO’s Carson Refinery to shaping biofuels commercialization strategy for BP’s Butamax joint venture and providing strategic insights to Stillwater clients. His Ph.D. in Chemistry and technical foundation, combined with cross-functional experience spanning commercial planning, regulatory affairs, and market development, gives him the ability to translate complex regulatory and technical dynamics into practical strategic insight for clients across the petroleum and renewable fuels industries.

Read Adam’s bio.

Gary Yowell, Senior Associate

30+ years with the California Energy Commission (CEC), including two years with the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Gary has been involved in government partnerships with the transportation fuels and vehicle industry, implementing clean fuels and vehicle regulations and legislation. He provided technical analysis and guidance to the executive and legislative officers. As an engineer, Gary has analyzed and modeled California’s vehicles energy use, emissions, and the impacts of clean fuels and CO2 emissions.

West Coast Fuels Value: Gary has built his career on identifying and quantifying the market, consumer, and vehicle technology forces – especially those related to zero emission vehicles – that shape petroleum and alternative fuel use. He develops empirical, data driven models to project future fuel demand, drawing on extensive experience analyzing the drivers of fuel consumption. His engineering background and government service further strengthen the precision and reliability of his demand forecasting work.

Read Gary’s bio.

James Primrose, Senior Associate

30+ years energy, low-carbon strategy & business development | Former bp Vice President, Strategy – Gas & Low Carbon Energy | Led bp’s renewables and bioenergy strategies, including strategies underpinning >$25bn of planned investment through 2030 | Deep expertise across biofuels, bioenergy, renewables, hydrogen, power and carbon markets | Independent advisor to energy companies, investors and clean-fuel businesses. Expertise in building at scale competitively advantaged new low carbon businesses both organically and inorganically.

West Coast Fuels Value: James brings an international perspective to the West Coast fuels market, with deep understanding of global biofuel markets and how international supply, demand, policy and pricing dynamics interact with the US West Coast. His expertise spans the full biofuel value chain, with particular depth in feedstocks, including agricultural markets, feedstock cost and pricing dynamics, and the implications of global policy and regulation for biofuel economics. Having developed biofuel strategies across Renewable Diesel, SAF and feedstocks, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, advanced cellulosic ethanol and other emerging technologies, as well as defined advocacy strategies for key US and EU markets, James is able to bring global market insight to the strategic challenges and opportunities facing the West Coast fuels industry.

Read James’ bio.

Frequently Asked Questions

What products and markets are covered?

Gasoline, jet, and diesel across the West Coast fuels market: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Pacific Northwest, plus desert markets in Arizona and Nevada including Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Reno. The coverage spans Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD) 5, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

What makes Stillwater's forecast different?

It is grounded in West Coast supply and demand balances, informed by deep policy expertise, and delivered by people who have had to act on forecasts like it. And we don’t just hand you a single path; every Outlook is tested across more than one scenario, so you can layer your own view of the market onto our analysis.

Does the Supply & Demand Outlook account for the Western Gateway Pipeline?

Yes. The 2026 edition includes a Western Gateway Pipeline scenario alongside the base case, so you can see how new inbound pipeline capacity would reshape West Coast supply and demand balances.

How is West Coast fuel policy reflected in the forecasts?

Programs like the LCFS and state climate programs inform how we see demand, supply, and economics evolving. We directly incorporate our expertise and views on West Coast fuel policies into our outlooks.

What about sensitivity testing?

The model has capabilities to test P10, P50, and P90 probability cases. If you’re interested in testing these views, reach out to connect.

Can the Outlooks be customized?

Yes. We can tailor the scenarios, markets, and cases to the decision in front of you, including additional scenario testing. In fact, our outlooks are often delivered as part of a larger engagement.

How are the Outlooks delivered and priced?

Each Outlook is delivered as a presentation-format report accompanied by a Q&A session with our team, either on its own or alongside a broader engagement. Reach out through the form below to discuss your needs and receive a quote.