For the first time in six weeks, the benchmark diesel price used as the basis for most fuel surcharges has moved higher.<\/p>\n
The weekly Department of Energy\/Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price rose 2.6 cents\/gallon to $3.734\/g, effective Monday but published Wednesday. It\u2019s the first increase since a 5.4 cts\/g increase July 21.<\/p>\n
Since a big jump of 20.4 cts\/g on June 23, 2025, which followed the tit-for-tat air attacks by Israel and Iran, the DOE\/EIA retail diesel price has been published in a narrow range.<\/p>\n
Its high price during the 10 weeks that followed the June 23 price was $3.812\/g on July 21; its low was last week, at $3.708\/g.<\/p>\n
Oil markets have not reacted strongly to macroeconomic developments or news events in petroleum markets themselves, even as markets as diverse as equities and precious metals have been volatile.<\/p>\n
But oil futures markets have been largely stable. For example, Brent, the world\u2019s crude benchmark, did not settle above $70\/barrel on any single day in August. It settled below $66\/b twice; it settled above $69\/b only on August 1, the first trading day of the month.<\/p>\n
Brent opened September by rising to a settlement at $69.14\/b, with the latest rise in tensions between Ukraine and Russia cited as the reason.<\/p>\n
But markets then reversed Wednesday, driven by news that the OPEC+ meeting this weekend is expected to authorize putting more oil on to the market. This is not much of a surprise\u2013the group has been doing that monthly\u2013but it helped reverse the gains of Tuesday in oil prices. At approximately 11:35 AM EDT, Brent was down $1.64\/b to $67.50\/b.<\/p>\n
One area that might be the focus of diesel consumers in coming weeks and months is California, where the state is expected to lose another refinery soon.<\/p>\n
Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX)<\/a> has said it plans to shutter its refinery complex in the Los Angeles area\u2013specifically in Carson and Wilmington\u2013by the end of the year. However, Reuters reported<\/a> that the shutdown operations are going to begin soon.<\/p>\n California gasoline and diesel prices have long been higher than the rest of the country, due to a mix of factors: higher taxes, carbon taxes, specialized blends and other regulatory issues.<\/p>\n The spread between the national DOE\/EIA diesel price and the California price in the Monday release was $1.18\/g, with the DOE\/EIA price that much less than the California price.<\/p>\n That was the highest spread since June 16. But it is well below the highest spread this year, which came in at $1.321\/g on May 26.<\/p>\n California\u2019s diesel price differential over the national figure this week is more than it was a year ago, when it was $1.124\/g, but less than two years ago, when the spread was $1.309\/g. But three years ago, it was just $1.09\/g.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in six weeks, the benchmark diesel price used as the basis for most fuel…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":197379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,109575,9969,109576,135,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-197378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-diesel-price","10":"tag-diesel-prices","11":"tag-jim-allenfreightwaves","12":"tag-markets","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115141564527744504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}