Diesel Dips to $2.532 a Gallon; Oil Slides Lower
The U.S. average retail price of diesel fell 0.7 cent to $2.532 a gallon and crude oil prices extended a bumpy monthlong slide in prices, dropping below $48 a barrel, experts said.
It was diesel’s third consecutive decline, the Department of Energy reported March 27. It has dropped 3.2 cents over that period.
Prices were mixed: down in eight areas, up in two — the Rocky Mountain and West Coast minus California regions.
Diesel costs 41.1 cents more than a year ago, when the price was $2.121 a gallon, DOE said.
The U.S. average price for regular gasoline slipped 0.6 cent to $2.315 a gallon. It is 24.9 cents higher than a year ago, DOE’s Energy Information Administration said.
Gasoline was higher in five regions and lower in four, EIA said.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed at $47.73 per barrel March 27, compared with $48.22 on March 20.
Oil was $54.05 on Feb. 27.
Meanwhile, a committee of ministers from Kuwait, Algeria and Venezuela and their counterparts from Russia and Oman, meeting over the weekend, asked OPEC to review the market and make a recommendation in April about whether to roll over output curbs, Bloomberg News reported.
“The market is tired of their verbal interventions,” John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy, told Bloomberg. “The extension is clearly in trouble since they didn’t make a recommendation at this meeting.”
At the same time, new rigs in the United States climbed to 809 on March 24, an increase of 20 from the week before and 385 more than a year earlier, according to oil-field services company Baker Hughes.
Baker Hughes ranks No. 14 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America.
