U.S. Retail Diesel Average Leaps 9.8 Cents to $2.118 a Gallon
he national average retail price of diesel fuel rose a whopping 9.8 cents to $2.118 a gallon, the biggest weeky increase since diesel jumped a dime in late September, the Department of Energy reported Monday.
Last Tuesday wholesale diesel prices jumped 9 cents in one day, Tom Kloza, editorial director of the Oil Price Information Service, told Transport Topics.
That, coupled with crude oil price increases to more than $50 a barrel last week could be factors in the jump, the biggest since diesel rose 10 cents a gallon on Sept. 27.
Diesel has risen 18.4 cents a gallon since DOE reported a national average price of $1.934 Jan. 10, a four-month low.
Meanwhile, the average price of regular gasoline rose 2.3 cents to $1.928 a gallon, DOE said. Gasoline was still 21.1 cents higher than the same time last year, DOE said.
The diesel price was 49.9 cents higher than a year earlier, DOE figures showed. The trucking industry burns an estimated 650 million gallons of diesel each week, which would raise the cost to the trucking industry by about $325 million more than the same week last year.
DOE reported diesel prices rose in all of its surveyed regions.
California saw the biggest increase, 11.7 cents to $2.376 a gallon. The Midwest had the next-largest jump, 11.1 cents to $2.064.
Prices on the East Coast averaged $2.117, a 9-cent increase, while the West Coast saw prices jump 9.1 cents to $2.412, the highest regional price.
Prices along the Gulf Coast rose 9.2 cents to $2.035 a gallon, and the Rocky Mountain region’s average rose 8.7 cents, to $2.174.
Each week, DOE surveys 350 diesel-filling stations to compile a national snapshot price.
