The latest fuel report. January 29th 2018
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that crude at $60 a barrel is “good”.
The U.S. average retail price of diesel popped 4.5 cents to $3.070 as oil increased to more than $65 a barrel.
It marked the third consecutive week of average diesel prices above $3.
Diesel now costs 50.8 cents more than it did a year ago, when it was $2.562 a gallon, the Department of Energy said Jan. 29.
The price of trucking’s main fuel rose in every region. Prices spiked 5.9 cents per gallon, the most, in the Midwest.
The average cost was the highest in California as it hit $3.683 a gallon.
The U.S. average price for regular gasoline rose 4 cents to $2.607 a gallon and was 31.1 cents higher than it was a year ago, according to DOE's Energy Information Administration. Gasoline cost more in every region, and the average price on the West Coast climbed 6.4 cents to $3.088 per gallon.
Looking ahead, “Diesel is largely considered a proxy for economic growth and few pundits would argue with the arc of strong U.S. growth and firm global GDP growth,” according to the 2018 Oil Price Information Service Outlook Forecast released in January.
Meanwhile, in the latest ICE Futures Europe and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data, money managers reported record wagers on continued price increases for both U.S. and global oil benchmarks, along with gasoline and diesel, according to Bloomberg News.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed at $65.56 per barrel Jan. 29 compared with $63.49 on Jan. 22.
Also, oil traders are braced for an end to a record run of U.S. inventory declines, according to Bloomberg.
The weekly U.S. oil rig count climbed to 759 during the week of Jan. 26, 12 rigs more than the week before and 193 more than a year earlier, oil-field services company Baker Hughes reported.
The increase in rigs may be a signal that U.S. crude production is poised to rise, even as production jumped to 9.88 million barrels a day in the seven days to Jan. 19, the highest level in weekly data compiled by the Energy Information Administration since 1983, Bloomberg reported.
Houston-based Baker Hughes ranks No. 15 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that crude at $60 a barrel is “good” and warned higher prices will encourage production of more expensive supplies such as shale, causing prices to drop again, according to Bloomberg.
