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Weekly release of benchmark diesel price shifts to Tuesday morning

EIA cites need for more time for respondents and the agency itself, sees ‘resource constraints’

John Kingston
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The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges will now be published Monday morning. (Photo: Jim Allen\FreightWaves)
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Key Takeaways:

The Energy Information Administration will be releasing its weekly average retail diesel price data on Tuesday mornings beginning this week, ending the practice of publishing the benchmark price on late Monday afternoon.

The change was announced on the EIA’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update page. This week will mark the first time the new policy is in effect, so the price that would have been published late on Monday will instead be released around 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

EIA’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update page is a compilation of the agency’s average retail price for gasoline and diesel. The data is published with a national average and several regional subcategories as well.

But it is the national average diesel price that gets the most attention, because it is the basis for most fuel surcharges in trucking and other transportation services.

In an email to FreightWaves, an EIA spokesman said the agency is making the change to give respondents to its weekly survey more time to provide their data.

“In recent years, we have experienced that some survey respondents struggle to provide the data early in the day on Mondays,” the spokesman said. “This typically delayed our completion of data collection by one and a half hours. These trends are compressing the amount of time we have for data processing and quality control. Therefore, we are adding time on Tuesday morning to ensure that the data is reliably released on time each week.”

The EIA also has been “experiencing resource constraints,” the spokesman said. “This led us to  evaluate our processes so we can ensure quality and reliability of our data.” However, the spokesman did not mention whether the changes were related to any of the reductions being overseen by the Department of Goverment Efficiency.

He added that there is no change to the methodology being used by EIA to calculate its numbers.

The change is not a pilot program that could be reversed after a period of review, the spokesman added. Moving it back to Mondays would “require additional resources to make that adjustment.”

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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.