The national average price of diesel fuel rose for a second straight week, gaining 1.5 cents to $2.231 a gallon, the Department of Energy said.
The increase follows last week’s 3.1-cent climb and leaves trucking’s main fuel $2.266 below the same week last year, DOE said following its weekly survey of filling stations Monday.
Gasoline, meanwhile, rose 6.9 cents to $2.309 a gallon, remaining over diesel for a second straight week since July 2007. Gas jumped 16.2 cents last week.
Diesel hit a two-month high of $2.229 a gallon in mid-April before declining 4.4 cents in the following three weeks and then rising 3.1 cents last week.
Oil pushed past $59 a barrel Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, in part because of a Sunday night explosion at a Sunoco refinery on the Delaware-New Jersey border, Bloomberg reported.
Each week, DOE surveys about 350 diesel filling stations to compile a national snapshot average price.