🛢 Energy & Commodities mixed · 6–18 months
A what‑if from the future

What if Record refinery runs pull crude tight despite ample supply?

Fat crack spreads push global refinery utilization to record highs, pulling crude demand up enough to tighten the prompt market even as upstream supply runs ample; the run-pull firms front spreads.

36%
our model probability
over 6–18 months
prediction markets — wisdom of the crowd
loading live odds…
Empirically anchored 36% · 90% range 22–51% · 40 analogues · measured class energy 89% in 18 mo · 3% held back for the unknown
how we built this number — every step
Measured class rate — energy ≈1.4869/yr → 89% in 18 mo89%
Analyst prior · editorial share 45% of the class40%
Pooled · weight 87%37%
Crowd — no liquid market
Reserve 3% · no extremizing (×1.0)37%
Published36%

The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.

loading the timeline…

What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Fat crack spreads push global refinery utilization to record highs, pulling crude demand up enough to tighten the prompt market even as upstream supply runs ample; the run-pull firms front spreads. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Diesel ▲ · Gasoline ▲ · Inflation surprise ▲ · Oil demand ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

If it happens — the markets it would move

Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.

MarketClassProjected move
130y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chartRate▲ +1bp
hist -3.99–+9.84% · other way +2.4% (n=12)
210y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chartRate▲ +1bp
hist -1.7–+5.15% · other way +1.0% (n=12)

Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did

Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.

Henry Hub natural gas falls to an all-time inflation-adjusted low on record output 2024-11 Niger coup d'etat 2023-07 PJM grid emergency during Winter Storm Elliott 2022-12 European gas crisis intraday record spike 2021-10 Texas grid failure during Winter Storm Uri 2021-02 Norilsk Nickel Arctic diesel spill 2020-05 Crude oil all-time high 2008-07 Henry Hub natural gas spot price peaks during 2008 commodity boom 2008-07 Platinum hits all-time record near $2,290 on South African power crisis 2008-03 South Africa Eskom power emergency spikes platinum/PGMs 2008-01 Amaranth Advisors natural-gas blowup 2006-09 Northeast blackout cascading grid failure hits ~55 million 2003-08 Argentina hyperinflation peak / Alfonsin early handover 1989-07 Silver Thursday 1980-03 Gold peaks at $850 1980-01 Volcker Saturday Night Special 1979-10 1979 Iranian Revolution oil shock 1979-01 Nixon Shock 1971-08 Iranian rial slides to a new record low 2025-12 Gold tops $4,000 and silver spikes past $50 in historic squeeze 2025-10 Fatal mud-rush halts Freeport's Grasberg, tightening copper supply 2025-09 Trump's 50% copper tariff sends Comex copper to a record 2025-07 Platinum hits an 11-year high on Chinese jewelry demand and deficit 2025-06 Anglo American demerges Valterra Platinum 2025-06 Iberian Peninsula total blackout 2025-04 H5N1 bird flu record US egg prices 2025-04 Gold tops $3,000 for the first time amid tariff and rate-cut fears 2025-03 DRC suspends cobalt exports 2025-02 DeepSeek shock crushes AI-power utilities Vistra and Constellation 2025-01 Russian gas transit through Ukraine ends 2025-01 Nasdaq Composite first close above 20000 2024-12 Palladium jumps after US pushes G7 sanctions on Russian metal 2024-10 Constellation-Microsoft Three Mile Island restart powers AI-utility trade 2024-09 Gold tops $2,500 for the first time on Fed rate-cut bets 2024-08 India slashes gold import duty from 15% to 6% in 2024 budget 2024-07 Homebuilders rally as cool June CPI fuels rate-cut bets 2024-07 USD/JPY hits a 38-year high before a CPI-driven intervention 2024-07 BHP abandons $49bn takeover bid for Anglo American 2024-05 Comex copper hits record on New York short squeeze 2024-05 Hot January CPI delays Fed-cut hopes 2024-02
AssetHistory saysAbnormal (20d · 5d)HitnConfidencevs cascade
High-yield credit HYGSHORT-0.1% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades64%32 0.21·
Gold XAULONG+0.2% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades59%34 0.16·
US dollar DXYLONG+0.1% · 5d +0.1%55%40 0.08·
10y yield DGS10LONG+4bp · 5d +3bp53%40 0.07✓ matches cascade
Volatility VIXLONG+2.8% · 5d -1.8% ↺ fades54%34 0.07·
30y yield DGS30LONG+9bp · 5d +5bp52%39 0.03✓ matches cascade
Bitcoin BTCLONG+1.3% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades47%28 0.00·

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Crowd odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-07-03.