I have no idea how many times I have explored fuel pricing in Energy Blog. But I am coming up on 1000 posts, so I am going to guess I have discussed pricing 36 times. Possibly more.I’m not really a “numbers” guy. I prefer poetry to spreadsheets. But long time member John Hollingsworth is rather into data. I’m going to hold off calling him a “diesel pricing freak” since he has provided us with meaningful insights into the fuel markets over the years.
Just because one of his calendar events is when the Energy Information Administration publishes new regional diesel pricing doesn’t make him a bad fellow. In fact, I am a fan of John.
Today I read his email with interest. He wrote: “Averaged over the past 12 months, our Piedmont Biofuel is cheaper than petroleum diesel. That means that if a member joined the co-op one year ago today and filled up only with our fuel, then that person would have saved money on fuel costs compared to buying only petroleum diesel at the regional price.”
Wow. How much money you save is of course limited to how much fuel you buy. Members buying 1 gallon per week would save 1.00 per year. After purchasing their 50.00 membership, that would leave them only 49.00 in the hole.
Our average member burns 10 gallons per week. But we do have contractors, and delivery companies, and other businesses which consume much more fuel than that. Even with the membership fee we are saving some people money.
Guys like John would be running on B99.9 even if it were more expensive. And many of our members are so glad to be “off the petroleum grid” that they don’t care what the price is. But it is nice to think that we are close to an economic argument for running around on our fuel…
Check out this graph which John made of Piedmont pricing over time. I thought it was fascinating:
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