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Fuel Buyers Summit: Talking about the higher diesel price and what’s driving it

Retail diesel has gone up about $1 in a year; it’s a perfect time to talk about it

John Kingston
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Fuel is the second-largest expense at trucking companies, and FreightWaves has brought together a group of experts to talk about it on Sept. 22.

The virtual FreightWaves Fuel Buyers Summit is set to begin at 9 a.m. A distinguished group of seven well-known thought leaders in the field will be interviewed by FreightWaves editorial team members to probe what is driving fuel markets today. The subject is particularly timely given that the retail price of diesel, as measured by the Department of Energy, is up almost $1 per gallon from this time last year.

What’s particularly notable about the Fuel Buying Summit is that not only is there a focus on the market and the price for diesel fuel, but discussions about how environmental regulations are impacting the price of diesel now and how they might impact them in the future.

The summit will be hosted by Scott Berhang, Director of FreightWaves Academy. He’s been teaching fleets how to buy fuel with precision for more than 30 years. He’s widely recognized as the industry’s leading expert on transparent fuel procurement.


Fuel Buyers Summit highlights: 

  • John Auers of the refining engineering and consulting firm Turner Mason & Co. will speak about why renewable diesel is the hot market for oil refiners now, with lots of investment going into the production of this fuel that performs the same as — and maybe better than — diesel made from petroleum.
  • Tied closely to that will be a chat with Megan Boutwell. She is the vice president of operations at Stillwater Associates and will explain the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a rule unique to that state that is incentivizing investment in products like renewable diesel.
  • Nobody has his finger on the pulse of retail pricing more than Patrick DeHaan of GasBuddy. He is the head of petroleum analysis and will give his outlook on U.S. fuel prices.
  • Don Thibodeaux is the co-founder and CEO of FuelHub. He works closely with fuel end users on the technology and practices they use to purchase diesel.
  • Elaine Levin is the president of Powerhouse. Her firm builds hedging strategies for companies that have exposure to the price of fuel, which in this business is pretty much everybody.
  • Stephen Jones is the global fuel analyst at Argus Media. He’ll be talking about the “big picture” of what is going on in global oil markets.
  • Ken Moore is the vice president of sales at SkyBitz and works with major oil companies, downstream petroleum and chemical distributors, midstream oil and gas companies, and large bulk buyers to optimize delivery efficiency, inventory accuracy and forecasting with remote tank monitoring technology.

Register for the FreightWaves Fuel Buyers Summit for free here. 

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.