The pump price of regular gasoline fell another four cents last week to $3.79 per gallon, down for the fifth straight week. Haver Analytics' seasonally-adjusted price for regular declined twelve cents to $3.58 per gallon, also the fifth consecutive week down. Yesterday, the wholesale price for a gallon of unleaded was $2.89 versus $3.01 averaged last week.

The price for a barrel of light sweet crude oil declined last week to $103.46 but remained up sharply versus the low of $79.71 this past October. Yesterday, the cost of crude fell sharply to $97.94 per barrel. Prices peaked at $113.93 last April. Brent crude declined last week to $116.73 per barrel and fell further to $111.61 yesterday.

Natural gas prices rebounded again last week to $2.25 per mmbtu but were still down 49.8% y/y. Yesterday, prices rose further to $2.30 but remained off from the early-January 2010 peak of $6.50.

Reduced driving and improved fuel economy lowered the demand for gasoline by 4.7% y/y last week. The demand for residual fuel oil demand, used for heating, fell 5.1% y/y and distillate demand declined 1.6% y/y. Inventories of crude oil and petroleum products slipped 0.1% year-to-year. That comparison was improved versus the 5.0% decline this past fall.

The energy price data are reported by the U.S. EIA, Department of Energy and can be found in Haver's WEEKLY database. The daily figures are in DAILY and the gasoline demand figures are in OILWKLY.