Posted on 01/17/2015 8:07:20 AM PST by thackney
Users of diesel fuel - mostly the nation's truckers - haven't seen diesel prices fall as much as gasoline, but that's about to change.
Diesel "is slowly joining the party," with prices nationally declining an average of 44 cents a gallon in the last month, said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at consumer website GasBuddy.com.
DeHaan expects diesel prices to continue to fall by 35 to 50 cents a gallon nationally in the next month or so.
That aligns with the Energy Department's view, which expects diesel to average $3.07 a gallon this year, down from an estimated average of $3.82 in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration's most recent short-term energy outlook.
Diesel prices in Texas and Houston have dropped 41 cents and 37 cents, respectively, in the last month.
"If oil prices continue to go down or stay low, we'd anticipate that diesel would follow," said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association, a trade group.
That will help truckers, because the cost of diesel, along with labor, are the top expenses.
But it's not likely that lower diesel fuel prices will mean consumer goods will be less expensive. The cost of shipping goods "is generally moving higher," Costello said, because trucking companies' base rates are increasing as drivers are commanding higher pay.
"We have a driver shortage in the industry," Costello said. "It's not uncommon to hear of companies increasing driver pay to high single digits or even double digits in percentage terms."
While it seems reasonable that gasoline and diesel prices would move in tandem, that doesn't always happen.
The peak demand season for diesel occurs in the fall and the winter, Costello said, as trucks move goods for the holidays.
"At the same time, when it gets cold,... burn home heating oil,"...
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
$2.49/gallon here.
the tax difference between Diesel Fuel and Gasoline here in California will make up for any drop in prices...
its high now...and the bureacraps will see this price drop as an excuse to TAX TAX TAX the up side ..upside...down..
I’m looking for the price drop at the marina. It’s $3.109 this week. I need about 300 gallons to top off the tanks.
Retail kerosene here in NC shot well past diesel several years ago. Due to the general slide in retail fuel prices, diesel is now under $3.00/gal. here for the first time in a very long time. Kerosene? $3.99. Not moved much at all. Poor country people heat their houses with it using portable kerosene heaters, or once did. It has no road tax, it’s dyed red and illegal to use in road-going vehicles. So, unless there’s some penalty attached to kerosene of which I’m not aware, I can only assume that the supply is constrained, but even home heating oil is cheaper. I don’t know what to make of it.
Good news for farmers!
Is there any reason they can't burn highway diesel in their kerosene heaters?
I don’t use them so I can’t say, but the two are quite similar to the point of being interchangeable in diesel engines. Don’t know about effluent and enclosed spaces, though.
Add JET-A and JP8 to that list ... but the aviation fuels have anti-gel additives not present in highway fuel. And they're not cheap.
I don't have a kero heater; if I did, I'd try it.
Diesel should be half the price of gas, its much easier to refine. In fact it’s almost not refined.
It was typically half the price of gas in the 1970s until people started buying diesel cars to take advantage of the price difference. Soon as that started happening the oil companies tool advantage of the 79 oil crisis to bump up the price to parity with gas.
It’s a giant fraud and a ripoff and they make tons of money on it.
Not since comrade billie boy clinton imposed, through the communist front EPA, low sulfur rules to take place after it was out of office and comrade georgie bush left them in place.
Low sulfur diesel is very expensive to refine.
Wonder how well fuel oil will track with it now that ULS is required in that too.
One thing I notice servicing boilers these past couple of years with ULS fuel oil is that they are much cleaner at annual service time with less black soot deposits. More white ash now in the heat exchangers.
The shaft seals on the oil pumps is another story though and the jury is still out on that one.
Diesel should be half the price of gas, its much easier to refine. In fact it’s almost not refined.
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A decade ago that was true before the EPA and ULSD. Not any more. You won’t make a sellable product from the sweetest oil without hydrotreating units and the like.
Thanks to both of you.
It would be interesting to know if they put the rules in place knowing that there was price margin to absorb it.
Rats know their confiscation schemes are unpopular so they like to hide it, as Pelosi is proposing right now with a gas tax hike.
I have not seen any indication they ever were conserned with the impact. Not any more than requiring more celluose based ethanol than was produced worldwide. It is for us little people to make real their fantasies. How and how much are beneath their concerns.
Does anyone have insight regarding how propane prices will be affected by the drop in oil prices?
yes heaters require k1 kerosese.
The spot market for propane has been dropping like oil but greater differences by location.
My client is a large propane producer.
Freight is disproportionately transported using diesel fuel, and further declines in consumer goods can be expected.
Before I took this job, I was told that the cost of living out here is low... maybe my rent was 1/2 of what it would be in, say, New Jersey... but fuel and groceries are ridiculous out here in NW Pennsylvania.
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