Diesel Average Up 1¢ to $2.914 In 6th Consecutive Increase
This story appears in the June 1 print edition of Transport Topics.
Diesel’s average U.S. price rose 1 cent to $2.914 a gallon last week, the sixth straight increase, the Department of Energy reported.
Diesel has gained 16 cents in the past six weeks, but its price is $1.011 less than a year ago, DOE said after its weekly survey of filling stations. Last week was the smallest of the recent gains.
DOE also said the retail gasoline average rose 3 cents to $2.774. That, too, was the fuel’s sixth straight gain, but it is 90 cents below a year earlier.
Crude oil, meanwhile, teetered near a one-month-low $57 a barrel last week, in advance of this week’s OPEC meeting, at which the oil cartel’s members were expected to keep production levels in place.
One analyst said last week that, with crude prices relatively stable, diesel prices could slide modestly in the coming weeks after its recent run-up.
“I think there’s a possibility we could see diesel prices retreat a little further” in the short term, said Gene McGillian, a trader and analyst with Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut.
“We have seen signs that OPEC is not going to change their new policy” when the oil cartel’s ministers meet June 3-4, McGillian told Transport Topics.
And while diesel prices may fall in the short term, they could rise in the second half of the year if U.S. oil production levels continue to decline, he said.
An executive with a nationwide carrier said last week that his company uses auxiliary power units and has reduced the size of engines in its newer trucks to boost mileage and trim fuel costs.
“We are fuel-conscious; that’s a huge expense to us,” said Larry Jones, director of maintenance for truckload carrier Daily Express Inc. in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The carrier has been putting APUs on its company-owned trucks since 2005, Jones said.
“That’s an obvious savings — if you look at before and after, it’s always at least a half-mile per gallon,” he told TT.
Daily Express has about 35 company-owned trucks plus several hundred owner-operator units for its nationwide specialized truckload and heavy-haul operations.
Newer trucks of 2012 model year and later make up the majority of its fleet and “are more fuel-efficient,” Jones said, adding that the carrier has downsized its engines to 13-liters from 15-liters.
“We were trying to target those to the portion of the market that we felt we had too big an engine on . . . all with an eye on fuel savings,” he said.
Daily Express also has on-site fuel tanks it fills every week to 10 days, for which it gets discounts, and the fleet gets price cuts on its over-the-road purchases from Petro and TravelCenters of America.
Oil, meanwhile, fell below $57 a barrel May 28, its lowest level in a month, sliding to $56.51 in intraday New York Mercantile Exchange trading, Bloomberg News reported.
DOE reported that day that crude inventories fell 2.8 million barrels for the week ended May 22.
Distillates, which include diesel, jumped 1.1 million barrels for the week, while gasoline supplies dropped by 3.3 million barrels, DOE said in its weekly inventory report.
