Argus US Products

Like all liquids, fuels expand and contract with changes in temperature. When they get colder, they contract, resulting in less overall volume. When they heat up, they expand, yielding more overall volume.

Argus TCFs account for these changes, modelling the effect of ambient temperature on the temperature and density of fuel in terminal tanks around the US. TCFs can be used to convert between net prices (the price for volumes measured at the industry-standard, 60° F) and gross prices (the price for volumes measured at a real-world temperature). The result is precise billing based on true product transfer, not guesswork or month-later corrections to invoices.

Imagine a given quantity of gasoline, expanding and contracting as the outside temperature changes. The Argus TCF is calculated as the volume occupied by that fuel at 60° F, divided by the volume occupied by that same quantity of fuel at its in-tank temperature on a given day. The TCF goes up as real-world temperatures drop, and goes down as real world temperatures rise.

Argus publishes six daily TCFs for all terminals in the Northeastern and Midwestern US.

Each Argus TCF is calculated using a proprietary thermodynamic model which accounts for atmospheric heat transfer, radiation heat loss by night, and heat transfer through the base of a tank to the ground. Each TCF relies on 9 prior days of ambient temperature data, and makes the following assumptions about the tank in which the fuel is held:

• Tank is 14m high, 14m wide, and 60pc full
• Tank is turned every five days on average
• Tank paint has a reflectivity of 60%

In addition, “refinery-fed” TCFs assume that the tank is being refilled direct from a refinery, with fuel that is warmer than ambient.

Argus TCFs can be used to adjust “net” prices to account for changes in the fuel’s temperature, and therefore its density:

Net (60° F) price per gallon * TCF = Gross (at real-world temperature) price per gallon

A full supply contract might take a more complex form, for example:

Gross price  = {(90% * Gasoline) + (10% * Ethanol)}*Argus TCF

Argus TCF naming convention:

Click here to download a .csv of our most recent PA code list.

Argus TCFs are already available to all subscribers of our US Products Service. They are published each weekday at 3:45pm CT along with our US road fuel assessments, and are included in the US Products data feeds.

• Our Argus Direct platform's “Price data” section
• The Argus Direct for Spreadsheets Microsoft Excel add-in
• Data feeds
  • FTP
  • API
  • Through third party partners such as MarketView, Thomson Reuters and DTN

• Argus TCFs are based on actual temperatures, not historical averages
• Our thermodynamic model produces more accurate estimate of in-tank temperature than simply using ambient temperature
• We use temperature data localized to the specific terminal
• Our method allows daily temperature correction – with no need to revise retroactively