U.S. Gasoline Prices Slip As Natural Gas Prices Surge

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline prices edged down a penny last week to $3.29 (-7.0% y/y) last week and remained down versus the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in February of last year. Haver Analytics constructs seasonal factors to account for seasonal volatility. The adjusted price also fell last week to $3.50 per gallon, down from $3.94 in February last year.

Extremely cold winter temperatures around the U.S. notably strengthened natural gas prices last week to $5.30 per mmbtu and were up by nearly two-thirds versus last year. Yesterday, prices retreated to $5.07 per mmbtu.

The per barrel cost of WTI crude oil increased to $97.28 (-0.2% y/y) last week but remained down sharply from the $108.67 high in early September. Yesterday, prices fell back to $96.43. Brent crude oil prices fell last week to $108.81 per barrel (-5.9% y/y) and yesterday slipped further to $107.14 per barrel.

The demand for all petroleum products increased 4.2% y/y last week. Gasoline demand declined 1.0% y/y. Residual fuel oil needs, used for heating, fell by 13.5% y/y but distillate demand improved 10.5% y/y. Inventories of crude oil and petroleum products fell 3.5% y/y.

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

Orders to all manufacturers roughly matched expectations and fell 1.5% (+0.8% y/y) during December. For all of last year new orders rose 2.7% and roughly equaled the 2012 increase. Last month's decline reflected a little-revised 4.2% drop (+0.4% y/y) in durable goods orders, led lower by aircraft bookings. Orders for nondurable goods (which equal shipments) increased 1.1% (1.2% y/y) after a 0.4% November slip. Shipments from petroleum refineries jumped 2.9% (0.5% y/y) and that was accompanied by a 2.3% rebound (6.8% y/y) in shipments from textile mills. Apparel shipments recovered 1.1% (6.0% y/y), basic chemical shipments increased 0.8% (0.9% y/y) and paper product shipments inched 0.4% higher (-0.9% y/y). 

Inventories in the factory sector increased 0.5% (2.3% y/y), the strongest monthly rise since January. For all of last year inventories rose a steady 2.3%. Apparel inventories jumped 2.6% (17.5% y/y) but chemical inventories slipped 0.3% (+1.1% y/y), down for the eighth straight month. Petroleum inventories slipped 0.1% (-1.4% y/y) while paper product inventories ticked up 0.1% (-0.7% y/y). In the durable goods sector, inventories gained 0.8% (3.7% y/y).

The factory sector figures are available in Haver's USECON database. The expectation figure is in AS1REPNA.