12-month story: Crude oil prices move slightly lower, but diesel falls further

The small decline in the Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration diesel price this week is notable mostly when a look into the past is undertaken.

The price published by DOE/EIA that is used for most diesel surcharges was $4.022 per gallon effective Monday, a drop of 3.6 cents a gallon from a week earlier. In the last three weeks, the price has been unchanged, down 5.1 cents a gallon and then followed by this week’s decline.

Fifty-two weeks ago, on March 6, 2023, the DOE/EIA price was $4.282 cents a gallon, 26 cents more than Monday’s price.

But Monday also was the time for another comparison: the price of crude now versus a year ago.

On March 6, 2023, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) settled at $80.46 a barrel, though the price of WTI just prior to that data had been holding relatively firm at levels less than $80 a barrel.

A year later on Monday, the WTI settlement was $78.74 a barrel. That means that over 12 months, against a background of OPEC+ implementing significant cuts in output — when U.S. production soared more than 1 million barrels a day to 13.3 million barrels a day, and when countries like Guyana and Brazil saw their own output climb as well — the only thing that happened is that the price of the U.S. benchmark crude declined about 2.2%.

Source: freightwaves.com