- Retail regular gasoline prices fell by 53.7c in the last four weeks to $3.239/Gal. About 54% of the change was due to the price of crude oil, while the remainder was the refinery margin
- Scroll down for a chart of the RBOB-WTI crack spread, a measure of refinery margin. It shows elevated cracks this year
- Total motor gasoline inventories rose by 5.3 MMBbl/d for the week ending December 2 and are about 3% below the five-year average for this time of year
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- Retail diesel prices fell by 60.8c in the last four weeks to $4.754/Gal. About 40% of the change was due to the price of crude oil, while the remainder was the refinery margin
- Scroll down for a chart of the NY Harbor ULSD-WTI crack spread, a measure of refinery margin. It shows elevated cracks this year
- Distillate fuel inventories rose by 6.2 MMBbl/d for the week ending December 2 and are about 9% below the five-year average for this time of year
- US Retail diesel prices have been steadily declining for more than a month
- According to the EIA, the average price of retail diesel is $4.754/Gal as of Dec 12, down from $4.967 on December 5 and $5.141 on Nov 28. Prices have been slowly falling since Nov 7
- Recent declines in the price could have been fueled by a combination of declining demand and growing inventories
- EIA’s U.S. Distillate (mostly diesel) products supplied, which is a proxy for consumption, was 3.55 MMBbl/d for the week ending Dec 2 compared to 4.257 MMBbl/d in the week ending Oct 28
- The 0.622 MMBbl/d Keystone Pipeline is still shut after last week’s leak, and TC Energy has not announced a restart date
- Analysts expect pump prices may start to increase if the pipeline is shut down for longer than a week
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