Average Diesel Price Rises to Within 1 Cent of Record
he average retail price of diesel fuel rose 1.8 cents to $1.763 per gallon, the Department of Energy said Monday, and is now only 0.8 cent below its record high.
The price of commercial trucking's main fuel has increased eight of the past nine weeks, totaling 14.6 cents. That means a trucker would pay nearly $30 more on a 200-gallon purchase at retail pumps than in the middle of March.
Diesel is 32 cents higher than a year earlier, and is nearing the record high of $1.771 set on March 10, 2003, just prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for June delivery rose 17 cents to settle at $41.55 a barrel, the fourth-straight record closing price, Bloomberg reported.
The Air Transport Association again called on the government to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but Treasury Secretary John Snow rejected the idea and instead urged OPEC to boost supplies, Bloomberg said.
Meanwhile, DOE said the average price of diesel declined 0.5 cent to $2.25 in its West Coast grouping of states, but increased through the rest of the nation.
The average price along the East Coast rose 2.2 cents $1.70, DOE said, which was 22.3 cents higher than a year earlier.
Each week, DOE surveys 350 diesel-filling stations to compile a national snapshot price of diesel prices across the country.
