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Streak of lower benchmark diesel prices hits 10 weeks with latest drop

Big decline in futures market may have fizzled out for now

The benchmark used for most fuel surcharges dropped for the 10th straight week. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Diesel prices may have hit a bottom for now in the futures market, but the average weekly retail diesel price posted its 10th consecutive decline Monday.

The price, reported by the Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration, dropped 2.9 cents a gallon to $3.526. Over that 10-week span, the price has fallen 33.9 cents.

That benchmark price, used for most fuel surcharges, is about $1.10 a gallon less than it was a year ago.

Meanwhile, the price of ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) on the CME commodity exchange, after reaching on Sept. 10 its lowest settlement since December 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine, has staged something of a rebound.


The Sept. 10 settlement was $2.058 a gallon. It rose the next two days to settle Thursday at $2.1188. It bounced up and down the next two days, settling Monday at $2.0958, just under 4 cents more than the recent low settlement last Tuesday.

The decline in retail prices reflected in the 10-week decline is chasing after a fall in ULSD on CME that took the price from a settlement of $2.348 per gallon on Aug. 26 to the recent low last Tuesday.

The only significant bullish news in the market continues to be coming out of Libya, where a continuing and long-standing power struggle between different geographic factions has led to a significant cut in the country’s production and exports. Reports late Monday said Libyan exports last week were 314,000 barrels per day, down from 468,000 a week earlier. Before the most recent sharp drop, exports were more than 1 million barrels a day.

Beyond that, bearishness prevails. Data from the Intercontinental Exchange on trader positions was described in one news report as showing investors were “more bearish than ever,” based on the number of short positions that financial investors had taken in the Brent crude market.


UBS, the big Swiss bank, was reported Monday to have revised downward its oil forecasts for the next two years. Its previous estimate for Brent in the fourth quarter was $83 a barrel. It is now $75.

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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.