Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
The U.S. average retail price of diesel slipped 0.2 cent to $2.595 a gallon as oil prices dropped below $50 a gallon and U.S. rig counts continued to rise.
Diesel now costs 39.7 cents more than it was a year ago, when the price was $2.198 a gallon, the Department of Energy said April 24.
Regional prices for trucking’s main fuel were mixed, with four areas posting decreases and five showing increases, while one area, the Gulf Coast, was unchanged.
Oil retreated below $50 a barrel amid concern that rising U.S. crude output will offset efforts of OPEC to trim a global glut, according to Bloomberg News.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed at $49.23 per barrel April 24, compared with $52.65 on April 17. Crude’s highest price this year was $54.45 on Feb. 23.
“We had another rise in the rig count, which will send output higher, while Saudi Arabia and Russia are being cagey about extending the cuts,” John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy, told Bloomberg. “The market is tired of empty gestures and needs to see solid evidence that they’re having an impact on inventories.”
The U.S. rig count increased to 857 during the week of April 17, up by 10 from the week before and 426 more than a year earlier, oil-field services company Baker Hughes Inc. reported, and Bloomberg described the increases as the longest stretch of gains since 2011.
Baker Hughes ranks No. 14 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America.
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