Deliveries of petroleum products declined to an average 20.08 million barrels a day through June, American Petroleum Institute said in a monthly report. Gasoline deliveries fell 1.7 per cent, the first "significant" decline in 17 years.
Fuel demand fell as prices for crude oil, gasoline and heating oil futures reached records. The higher prices helped send the US economy to its weakest six-months of growth in five years, according to the Commerce Department. Oil has averaged $100.10 a barrel in the past 12 months, up 58 per cent from a year earlier, and reached a record $147.27 on July 11.
"We have a situation where what's driving everything is these high crude oil prices, which have continued though we've seen declines in the past few days," API Chief Economist John Felmy said in a conference call with reporters today.
Oil for August delivery rose $1.24, or 1 per cent, to $130.53 a barrel at 12:42 pm on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It dropped more than $15 over the previous three days and is poised for a record weekly slump in dollar terms.
The average price for regular gasoline at the pump touched an all-time high of $4.114 a gallon July 16, according to AAA, the biggest US motorist organisation. The average price was $4.105 a gallon today.
"Higher pump prices and a slowing economy were undoubtedly factors" in the slowdown in fuel demand, Ron Planting, an analyst with the Washington-based institute who helped prepare the report, said in a release. "At 20.08 million barrels per day, total demand was the lowest in three years."
Gasoline Consumption: Gasoline consumption averaged 9.06 million barrels a day during the first six months of the year, the API report showed.
Deliveries in June were an average 9.2 million barrels a day, down 3.2 per cent from a year earlier.
The drop in fuel use was lessened in the second quarter by rising demand for diesel, the report showed. In June, consumption of distillate fuels, including diesel and heating oil, averaged 4.27 million barrels a day, up 3.4 per cent from June 2007. Overall deliveries in the first half of the year were down 1.2 per cent at 4.21 million barrels a day.
"Diesel tends to be used for freight transportation" by people who have "already figured out the most efficient routes and the most fuel-efficient ways to do their jobs", Planting said on the call. Gasoline, on the other hand, is used more by consumers "where there's discretionary driving".
Jet-fuel consumption averaged 1.6 million barrels a day in the year through June, a 1.2 per cent decline from a year earlier.
The US has produced 5.1 million barrels a day of crude oil so far this year, down 2.2 per cent from the same period in 2007, according to the institute. Output of 5.1 million barrels a day in June was down 47 per cent from the peak of 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970.
Crude oil imports fell 2.5 per cent from a year ago, and gasoline imports dropped about 10 per cent, the report said.
