Execution Is the New Competitive Advantage in Downstream Fuels

Market volatility isn’t going away. Leaders from DTN, NextField Solutions, and SIGMA explain why resilience depends on connected operations, faster execution, and better decision-making.

For downstream fuel businesses, volatility is no longer a temporary disruption to manage until conditions return to normal; it’s the operating environment.

During the webinar, Building Resilience: Navigating Volatility in Downstream Fuels, Ken Evans, Strategy and Industry Advisor, Energy and Refined Fuels at DTN; Brian Grosso, CEO of NextField Solutions; and Scott Berhang, CEO of SIGMA, explored what that reality means for fuel suppliers, distributors, marketers, retailers, and transportation providers.

“We’re not just dealing with more volatility. We’re dealing with less slack overall in the entire ecosystem.”

— Ken Evans

Their central message was clear: The industry is not only experiencing more volatility but also operating with less slack, fewer buffers, and less room for error. This is true across inventory, infrastructure, labor, transportation capacity, credit, and decision-making processes.

“We’re not just dealing with more volatility,” Evans said. “We’re dealing with less slack overall in the entire ecosystem.”

The businesses best positioned for this environment will be those that can recognize change earlier, understand its operational impact, and act before the opportunity or the available response disappears.

Why Volatility Feels Different Now

Fuel market volatility is not new, but the panelists agreed that today’s conditions feel structurally different.

“I’ve been at this for almost 45 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen volatility like this,” Berhang said.

Large market swings can make it difficult for fuel marketers and retailers to plan, manage customer expectations, and absorb the higher credit exposure associated with each load.

Grosso described the shift from isolated emergencies to a persistent “long burn.”

In the past, operators might treat a hurricane, refinery outage, or supply disruption as a temporary crisis. Teams would respond, put out the fire, and eventually return to normal operations. That playbook is no longer enough.

“We can’t sit here and say, ‘We need to put out this fire, and then we’ll be in the clear,’” Grosso said. “We’re beyond that.”

The baseline market is already volatile. A hurricane, terminal outage, transportation constraint, or geopolitical event now lands on top of an operation that may already be stretched.

Companies are also working with fewer traditional buffers. Spare inventory, available drivers, flexible credit, and excess transportation capacity may not be there when the next disruption arrives.

As a result, relatively small mistakes can become expensive very quickly.

Berhang noted that many fuel marketers are navigating more than market volatility. Across the industry, organizations are balancing generational leadership transitions, consolidation, and increasing operational complexity. Businesses that were historically built around local relationships, institutional knowledge, and rapid decision-making are increasingly expected to operate with the discipline, visibility, and governance of larger enterprises. That transition creates its own form of pressure.

As organizations grow and become more complex, resilience depends not only on experience and relationships but also on the ability to share information, coordinate decisions, and execute consistently across the business.

Resilience And Performance Are Not Opposing Goals

The discussion challenged a common narrative: resilience and efficiency are not necessarily opposing objectives.

Companies are rarely choosing to be less resilient on purpose. More often, they are optimizing for margin, utilization, capital discipline, and operating performance. The risk is discovering during a disruption that the operating model has fewer options than expected.

The question is not whether organizations should choose resilience over performance but whether they have become so optimized for expected conditions that they struggle when conditions become abnormal.

Disruptions Expose Weaknesses That Were Already There

One of the strongest themes from the discussion was the importance of preparing before the operation is under pressure.

The organizations that navigate disruption best tend to know which customers, routes, assets, and activities create the most value. They understand where their biggest operational constraints are and what backup options exist when the original plan fails.

That preparation may include:

• Identifying alternate suppliers, terminals, and carriers
• Defining escalation paths for supply or logistics issues
• Understanding which customer commitments take priority
• Tracking credit exposure as fuel values change
• Establishing the KPIs that matter during disruption

A crisis plan will rarely work exactly as written — that is not the point. The value of planning is that it gives teams a starting structure. It reduces the number of decisions that must be invented under pressure and helps employees understand how to respond when conditions change.

It also helps address another consequence of persistent volatility: employee burnout. Schedulers, dispatchers, drivers, supply teams, and customer-facing employees may be asked to adjust repeatedly throughout the day. When they understand why a decision is changing, they are more likely to stay engaged and adapt together.

Resilience is therefore not only an operational capability but also a communication discipline.

Avoid the “Data Swamp”

Downstream fuel businesses have invested heavily in collecting data. But more information does not automatically produce better decisions.

“KPI — the key word is ‘key.’”

— Brian Grosso

Grosso described a common challenge as the “data swamp”: Companies gather large volumes of information without clearly identifying which metrics matter most.

“KPI — the key word is ‘key,’” Grosso said.

Organizations that navigate disruption well focus on the indicators that reveal whether the operation is performing, whether a disruption is developing, and where leadership intervention is required.

That may include:

• Supply availability by terminal
• Inventory and allocation exposure
• Driver and asset availability
• Customer demand changes
• Market movements that create purchasing opportunities
• Planned versus completed fuel movements

The last point is especially important. Grosso described situations in which a supply decision was made, but the fuel was not picked up. By the time the team discovered the failure 12 or 24 hours later, the company’s position had already changed.

Faster data matters because it shortens the time between a failed action and a corrective response.

Visibility Must Lead to Action

The panelists emphasized that volatility creates risk, but it can also create opportunity.

A sharp market dip may create a buying opportunity. An arbitrage may emerge between locations. A different supply option may become temporarily attractive. But those opportunities can disappear quickly.

“There are actually some decisions we don’t even try to make because by the time we could execute them, the opportunity would be gone.”

— Ken Evans

Evans noted that some businesses may recognize a valid opportunity but choose not to pursue it because they know their internal processes cannot execute quickly enough.

“There are actually some decisions we don’t even try to make because by the time we could execute them, the opportunity would be gone,” Evans said.

In volatile markets, the challenge is not always identifying the right decision. Increasingly, it is turning that decision into action before conditions change again. The constraint is not always decision quality but often execution speed.

A company may see the right move but still lack the connected workflows and operational confirmation needed to complete it in time. That makes resilience inseparable from digital integration.

Technology and Relationships Must Work Together

The discussion did not position technology as a replacement for human experience. In fact, relationships were one of the most important sources of resilience discussed during the webinar.

Fuel remains a relationship-driven business. Suppliers, marketers, carriers, drivers, and customers depend on one another during periods of tight supply and operational stress.

Berhang shared a story about a younger employee who suggested sending an email during a difficult situation. The company owner’s response was immediate: Pick up the phone.

That human connection still matters.

At the same time, personal relationships alone cannot manage the complexity of a modern fuel operation. A handshake agreement may be made in minutes, while entering it into pricing, supply, transportation, and back-office systems may take much longer.

The strongest operating model combines:

• Trusted relationships that create commitment
• Connected technology that makes the commitment visible and executable

From Awareness to Coordinated Action

The webinar discussion pointed to a broader conclusion: Resilience cannot be created within a single department. It depends on an ecosystem connecting market intelligence, supply, logistics, pricing, sales, customer commitments, credit, and execution.

Increasingly, resilience is less about optimizing individual functions and more about improving coordination across them. This is the challenge DTN Fuel Operations Hub is designed to address.

Fuel Operations Hub brings critical fuel workflows and operational information into a unified environment, helping teams improve visibility, reduce manual handoffs, and respond more quickly when market or operating conditions change.

By connecting information across pricing, supply, orders, contracts, customer activity, and operational execution, organizations can build a clearer view of what is happening and what needs to happen next.

That does not eliminate volatility. It gives teams a stronger foundation for managing it.

Volatility Cannot Be Waited Out

Evans closed the webinar with a reminder that the trigger behind volatility may change, but the leadership requirement will remain. Fuel businesses will need to respond faster, make better decisions, and continuously adapt their operating models.

Resilience is not about carrying unnecessary cost. It is about understanding where the organization is exposed and ensuring teams can act before small problems become larger ones.

Hear the Full Conversation

Watch the full webinar rebroadcast to hear the complete conversation, including additional perspectives on hurricane preparedness, fuel-buying strategies, transportation constraints, credit exposure, and the role of relationships across the downstream fuel ecosystem.

For ongoing analysis of the developments shaping energy and fuel markets, explore DTN refined fuels insights.

Watch the full Building Resilience webinar rebroadcast for more strategies on navigating downstream fuel volatility.

Explore DTN Fuel Operations Hub to see how connected workflows can improve visibility and execution.