Today’s fuel price musings - diesel prices falling faster than gas

August 11th, 2008 at 05:35pm Thomas V. Bona

Remember when diesel cost less than gas? (Hint: It was just a year ago, so if you can’t remember it, then you may have more serious problems than this blog can help you with.)

Historically, it turns out that was an anomaly, according to information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and FactCheck.org. It used to be that gasoline was costlier in the summer, but not other times. More often than not, diesel cost more, as shown in FactCheck’s handy chart:

Why is this interesting to me today? Because the gap between diesel and gasoline in Rockford - both as a percentage and as fixed number - is at its lowest February Diesel is 13.7 percent higher than gasoline, which as you can see is still higher than it historically is.What this points out is that the run-up in diesel prices has been harsher than the one in gasoline (Diesel is still 48 percent above a year ago, gasoline is 35.5 percent up). That’s because of a number of reasons - a lot of the growing global demand is for diesel, plus diesel sees increasing environmental regulations on it.As dropping demand sends oil prices falling, it makes sense that diesel is falling faster than gasoline.

Remember to check out our Gas Tracker feature, and add prices you see. The more trackers we have, the better information we’ll have.

Here’s the situation in the metro area, state and nation (prices courtesy of AAAs fuelgaugereport.com). Let’s do diesel first for our trucking friends:

Diesel: Rockford dropped almost six cents to $4.40 a gallon, down 41 cents in the past month. We have the eighth-highest diesel prices in the state. The state average dropped almost three cents to $4.56, down 28 cents in the past month. The national average dropped two cents to $4.54, down 27 cents in the past month. Illinois has the 22nd-highest prices in the country (including the District of Columbia).

Gasoline: Rockford dropped less than a cent to to $3.87 a gallon, down almost 34 cents from the record high July 16. We’re up to third in the state in gas prices, which is the place we used to hold regularly. Could those days be back? The Illinois average dropped less than a cent to $3.94. The national average dropped a cent to $3.81. Illinois has the 12th-highest gas prices in the nation (including the District of Columbia).

Entry Filed under: Fuel price musings