Diesel Average Sheds 5.9¢ in 9th Straight Decline; $2.723 Is Lowest Price in Six Years
Diesel is $1.135 cheaper than a year ago after its ninth consecutive fall, the agency reported after its weekly survey of filling stations.
Gasoline's average price also took a big fall, sliding 5.7 cents to a 10-week low of $2.745. A year ago, gas was at $3.539 per gallon.
The last time diesel was lower than the current price was the week of Oct. 19, 2009, when it sat at $2.705.
Trucking's main fuel has fallen 19.1 cents since its most recent peak of $2.914 on May 25.
The 5.9-cent drop is the largest one-week slide since Jan. 26, when it fell 6.7 cents to $2.866 from $2.933.
The nine-week stretch is the longest period of consecutive falling prices this year and the longest such streak since a 12-week period from Nov. 10, 2014, to Feb. 2, 2015, when the average price plunged 84.6 cents.
U.S. average #Diesel fuel price on 7/27/15 = $2.723, DOWN $0.059 from week ago http://t.co/Anvp6GPYFe #truckers pic.twitter.com/Nb40AURva9
— EIA (@EIAgov) July 27, 2015
Gasoline remained at a higher national average price than diesel for the third week in a row. Gas prices fell in every area of the country except for the Rocky Mountain area, where prices went up in Denver by 3.2 cents, in Colorado by 4.7 cents, and in the Rocky Mountain region by 1.5 cent.
Will Speer, a senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com, told the Denver Post that Colorado — which has only one refinery of its own — relies significantly on supply from a WRB Refining plant in Borger, Texas, which is having refining-unit problems.
The price of diesel has now fallen below $3 a gallon almost everywhere; the lone holdout is California, where it remains at $3.072. On the West Coast, gas is still a hefty $3.545 a gallon.
Across the country, diesel is cheapest in the Gulf Coast region at $2.611 a gallon. The largest price fall this week occurred in the Central Atlantic, where the 6.7-cent drop put the average price of diesel at $2.918 a gallon.
