The crude oil and diesel markets are entering 2021 on a bullish run, with the primary commodity exchange price of diesel just about where it was when the pandemic put the final dagger into prices in early March and with OPEC and its OPEC+ brethren shocking markets with a decision on further restraining output.
The price that matters most to truckers is the Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration weekly retail price, and that’s on a run too: nine consecutive weeks of gains, rising to $2.64 a gallon, up almost 27 cents since its low price of the year in early November. It’s also almost recovered to where it was in early March when prices accelerated their pandemic-fueled decline sharply, though prices had been drifting since the news of the coronavirus first hit markets.