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DOE/EIA diesel price up for the week, first time since March

Increase marks first rise since 4 weeks of declines, 1 week of status quo

John Kingston
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Image: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

The weekly average retail price published by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration rose Monday, the first time it has posted an increase in six weeks.

The latest price is $3.142/gallon, up 1.8 cents from last week. Last week’s price of $3.124/g in turn was unchanged from the prior week. The four weeks of decline prior to that had sliced 7 cents off the price after a record-breaking run of 20 weeks of increases.

Rising by 1.8 cents in the past week marks the DOE/EIA price as the oil-related benchmark that went up the least in the past week. Prices overall have been on an increase, though the strength in the oil market is moving along at the continuing rise in virtually all key commodity prices. As Bloomberg said in a headline over the weekend for a story that talked about the commodity rally, “The price of the stuff that makes everything is surging.” 

Ultra low sulfur diesel on the CME commodity exchange settled Monday at $1.9519/g. That is an increase of 2.95 cents from the Friday settlement for June delivery of ULSD. The front month contract on the ULSD contract is now up 7.34 cents/gallon from where it settled last Monday.


Meanwhile, the national average wholesale price of diesel found in the ULSDR.USA data series in SONAR has risen roughly 5 cents in the past week, signaling that retail prices are lagging behind gains in the commodity and wholesale markets.

To learn more about FreightWaves SONAR, please go here.

Beyond riding the bull market in all commodities, oil has been lifted by a report midweek last week from Goldman Sachs, with its pronouncements always closely watched. 

In its report, Goldman said it saw an increase in global oil consumption of 5.2 million barrels/day over the next six months, which would be the largest on record. It also foresees a price of $80 for Brent, the global crude benchmark. That would tack on roughly $13 from current prices of Brent near $67-$68/b.


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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.