Price of Diesel Rises 3.4 Cents to Record $1.814

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

he U.S. average price for retail diesel fuel increased 3.4 cents to a record $1.814 per gallon, the Department of Energy said Monday.

DOE said this was the second straight week diesel set a record. It increased 2.6 cents the previous week and 11.4 cents over the past seven weeks.

Also Monday, crude oil rose to a record $44.98 a barrel after Iraq cut shipments to tankers in the Persian Gulf because of warnings of possible attacks, Bloomberg reported.

Crude oil for September delivery closed at $44.80 a barrel at the close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil was up 39% from a year earlier. Prices have passed intraday records every day since July 30.

DOE also said Monday the average retail price for regular gasoline dropped 1.1 cents to $1.877 a gallon. Gasoline was 30.6 cents higher than a year earlier.

The nationwide average price of gasoline is down from a record $2.064 on May 24.

Meanwhile, DOE said diesel is 32.2 cents higher than a year earlier. Prior to last week, the record had been $1.771, set on March 10, 2003, just prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The trucking industry burns more than 600 million gallons of diesel each week.

The steepest increase in the price of diesel was 4.3 cents to $1.781 in the Midwest, DOE said. Diesel increased throughout the country with the exception of DOE's West Coast grouping of states, where the price dipped 0.6 cent to $2.03.

Each week, DOE surveys 350 diesel-filling stations to compile a national snapshot price.

11775