Today’s fuel price musings - The power of the Chinese market

2 comments June 19th, 2008

Perhaps its fitting that as I’m sitting here in Rockford with a group of Chinese business and government leaders, its news out of China that’s causing a drop in oil prices. The government is raising the price of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel by 8 percent Friday, the first increase since November. That could lead to a curbing of demand in the growing economic power, as China follows other Asian nations in raising prices recently. Oil prices have dropped $3 so far today. Let’s see if it keeps going.

(By the way, shout out to blogger and businessman extraordinaire Bob Trojan, sitting next to me here with the Chinese delegation.)

On to the prices (courtesy of AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com)

Gasoline: Rockford fell another two cents to $4.05 a gallon, an almost nine cent drop in the last week. We’re still seventh in the state in gas prices. The state average dropped almost a cent to $4.14 a gallon. The national average dropped a fraction of a cent today to $4.07. Illinois now has the tenth-highest gas prices in the nation.

Diesel: Rockford dropped more than a cent today to $4.79. We’ve dipped to the fourth-highest diesel prices in the state. The state average dropped a fraction of a cent to $4.80 a gallon. The national average dropped a fraction of a cent to remain at $4.79 a gallon. Illinois has the 19th-highest prices in the country (including the District of Columbia).