Diesel Drops 3.6¢ to $4.023; Gasoline Jumps 18.7¢ to $3.835
Despite a major hurricane on Texas’ Gulf Coast this weekend, diesel fuel’s national average price fell for the ninth straight week, dropping 3.6 cents to $4.023 a gallon, but gasoline’s average jumped 18.7 cents, the Department of Energy said Monday.
Gasoline rose to $3.835, erasing much of the decline it had seen over the previous nine weeks, DOE said. Gas set a record $4.114 a gallon on July 7.
The diesel price, a five-month low, left trucking’s main fuel $1.059 higher than the same week last year, while gas was up $1.048 from a year ago, DOE said following its weekly survey of filling stations.
Diesel set a record $4.764 a gallon on July 14; since then, the price has plunged 74.1 cents.
The changes followed Hurricane Ike’s landfall in Galveston, Texas, early Saturday, prompting the closure of regional oil refineries and Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, news reports said. Some refineries were still struggling to come back online Monday following widespread power outages.
But despite the storm — which made landfall southwest of where Hurricane Rita hit near the Texas-Louisiana border in September 2005, causing record price spikes — refineries escaped major damage, and crude oil fell about $6 to close the trading day near $95 Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg reported.
Diesel fell in all five national regions, led by a 10-cent plunge on the West Coast, to $4.056 a gallon. It fell just 0.4 cent on the Gulf Coast, to $4.011.
Each week, DOE surveys about 350 diesel filling stations to compile a national snapshot average price.
