Biden Energy Agency Manipulating Weekly “On Highway Diesel Fuel Prices”, Delaying True Inflation Stats
[Hat Tip Mailroom] This is a very interesting little bureaucratic energy issue with big downstream ramifications.
Almost every transportation and manufacturing company uses the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) “weekly publication of average diesel prices” in order to calculate shipping costs. According to people in the industry, “this national average is what almost every trucking and logistics company bases their fuel surcharges on.”
However, on June 13th the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, stopped reporting the average weekly diesel price. For almost a month companies have been using an outdated average price in order to calculate shipping costs and fuel surcharges. [See Screengrab]
Originally the EIA said, “We are implementing new methodology to estimate weekly on-highway diesel fuel prices. On June 13, we started conducting the On-Highway Diesel Fuel Price Survey using new statistical methodologies.” {LINK} However, the EIA has not updated anything since that announcement.
As a result, all of the transportation charges and fuel surcharges have been underestimated and priced for almost a full month. The political motive for this move is transparent, it stops higher diesel prices from being passed along in the supply chain… which gives an artificial pause on inflation that comes as an outcome of higher diesel transportation costs (specifically trucking). As explained to CTH:
“The department of energy has not published a national average of diesel fuel prices since the week of June 13. In all of their decades of doing this, they have never missed a week, until that week. This EIA national average is what almost every trucking and logistics company bases their fuel surcharges on.
The DOE “changed their methodology” for calculating this and the week it was supposed to go live, their systems “crashed” (hacked?).
This is going to be a billing nightmare for trucking companies and shippers alike. The lobbying agencies in the transportation company ATA, TIA, TCA, NPTC, have all been very quiet about this. Bad stuff with lots of trickle-down implications.”
One way to tackle inflation is to take away accurate government statistics, that are used as accepted benchmarks by private industry, to calculate downstream prices.
Can you think of another reason for the political and ideological Dept of Energy to stop giving accurate estimates of current average diesel prices?
Post a Comment