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OPIS's trusted gasoline and diesel rack prices are available for nearly 400 wholesale locations in both OPIS standard (one price per supplier per market) and detailed terminal (multiple prices per supplier per market) formats. Never before have fuel buyers and sellers had such complete price visibililty.
The OPIS Rack Report includes an OPIS Spot Mean quote in over 225 cities for gasoline and distillate. This extra pricing data enlarges the view of the market and provides additional pricing options when buying and selling.
In addition, over 240 locations nationwide contain the OPIS Smart Rack which integrates wholesale gasoline prices with retail gasoline lows and averages by individual markets, and shows valuable profit margins. Use the OPIS Smart Rack to track retail prices, determine average margins for your competitors, benchmark retail and wholesale price averages and to determine the true cost of doing business anywhere.
The OPIS Rack Report also features the Spot Replacement Index (SRI) in over 215 cities. This innovative addition links local rack markets to bulk spot markets by capturing the "OPIS Spot Mean" daily by product. It then factors in the delivery costs (truck or pipeline tariffs, cost of money, terminal fees, product shrinkage, etc.) to get that spot product delivered to a particular rack.
OPIS has further enhanced the OPIS Rack Report by adding the actual posted prices for available biodiesel blends that are B20 or lower to our U.S. rack reports. For example, in Portland OR, you will see the addition of posted prices for B20, B10, B5, and B2, while in Chicago, you will see B11, B5 and B2.
OPIS is the industry benchmark for oil buyers and sellers who use rack prices to:
- Negotiate and benchmark fuel contracts
- Competitively shop and keep suppliers honest
- Measure company performance and evaluate competition
- Reconcile invoices and evaluate inventory
- Ensure the best price with a quick scan
View a list of the rack cities OPIS covers
You can gain real-time access to OPIS gasoline and diesel rack prices when and where you need them with OPIS Real-Time Racks. Get details here.
OPIS Standard Display (view sample here) includes only one terminal location per supplier based on the location where product is priced the most competitively and where the majority of customers in a particular city lift barrels. This allows the OPIS contract summary data, especially the contract average, which is widely used as a benchmark, to have a consistent methodology and avoid being manipulated by a supplier in a given city. OPIS verifies this data each day to ensure consistency and accuracy in calculating contract averages for benchmark purposes.
OPIS Terminal Display (view sample here) includes multiple-supplier listings for individual cities, even if a supplier consistently posts the same price at multiple terminals in a given metropolitan area. OPIS Terminal Display includes all terminal locations for any rack city to provide full supplier coverage.
OPIS “freezes” supplier prices and averages by rack at key time intervals throughout the day so buyers and sellers of fuel can index their purchases to an unbiased, third-party price frozen at a fixed point in time. The averages are stored in OPIS’s TimeSeries database so customers can easily settle disputes any time by retroactively looking up the frozen averages. These averages are in gross and net formats and appear daily in the various OPIS email, fax and web rack reports. The benchmarks include lows, highs and averages for all suppliers as well as branded and unbranded lows, highs and averages. Below are definitions of the three key OPIS rack benchmarks.
OPIS Contract Average: A snapshot of the average of all supplier postings in each OPIS rack market at approximately 10:00 a.m. eastern time. The snapshot includes all price moves from 6:00 p.m. the prior day up until the price file is frozen at approximately 10:00 a.m. (Example: The January 3 Contract Average encompasses all price moves that were made at 6:00 p.m. January 2 up until approximately 10:00 a.m. January 3.)
OPIS Closing Average: A snapshot of the average of all supplier postings in each OPIS rack market by 5:59 p.m. eastern time. The snapshot includes all price moves from 6:00 p.m. the prior day until the price file is frozen by 5:59 p.m. (Example: The January 3 Closing Average encompasses all price moves that were made at 6:00 p.m. January 2 up until we freeze the prices no later than 5:59 p.m. on January 3. It does not include any price moves made at or later than 6:00 p.m. on January 3.)
OPIS Calendar-Day Average: A snapshot of the average of all supplier postings in each OPIS rack market at 11:59 p.m. eastern time. The snapshot includes all price moves from 12:00 a.m. (midnight) until the file is frozen at 11:59 p.m. (Example: The January 3 Calendar-Day Average encompasses all price moves that were made at 12:00 a.m. on January 3 up through 11:59 p.m. on January 3. Hence, it is an average of all prices on that calendar day.)
OPIS Weekly Newsletter Prices
The OPIS prices which are posted in our weekly newsletter are also available by individual rack for delivery on Thursday evenings. This early delivery allows for a 4-day advance price from the published newsletter price.
Out-of-Product Designations
Pricing specialists communicate with suppliers and/or customers to confirm out of product designations, where a product may not be available for more than 24 hours. Postings which meet this criteria will be designated "out-of-product" with an "o" next to the listing. Because of the particularly complicated nature of the oil distribution system, OPIS will only denote "out-of-product" where supply is out for at least 24 hours. Products tagged with an "o" will not be part of the OPIS lows, highs or averages, a policy OPIS has adopted for a long time to avoid potential skewing of benchmarked wholesale numbers.
Intraday Price Moves
Due to increased market volatility, suppliers may sometimes change wholesale prices more than once a day. In these cases, OPIS offers a Intraday Price Move report which details intra-day moves not part of the usual 12:01 A.M., or 6:00 P.M. time frames for updates. In strictest compliance with anti-trust guidelines, OPIS only releases these prices after their specific effective time of change.
Early Evening Updates
More and more suppliers have changed their effective time for price moves from midnight-to-midnight to 6pm-to-6pm for mostly unbranded product. OPIS tracks these prices to give you an early update on the direction of the marketplace.
"We depend on OPIS Rack Reports for an accurate price reflection to keep not only our margins at an exceptional level, but also to keep us competitive for our customers. Without this tool we would be reacting too slowly to the volatile conditions. During extreme market moves, OPIS has done an outstanding job of keeping track of vendor outages to help us eliminate inaccurate numbers when factoring prices."
-- Luke Wiese, Nebraska Iowa Supply Company |
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