No weekly diesel price Monday as EIA still deals with tech issues

The weekly average retail diesel price data from the Energy Information Administration will not be released on its normal Monday schedule this week as the agency continues to struggle with technology problems.

However, a spokesman for the EIA, an arm of the Department of Energy, said the agency will be able to gather retail diesel and gasoline price data that will allow it to publish a price that will be effective Monday.

Technology problems prohibited the agency last week from publishing the benchmark weekly retail diesel price, which is used to calculate most fuel surcharges outside California. The release of that price was going to be delayed a day anyway due to the federal Juneteenth holiday on June 20. But as late Tuesday afternoon arrived, when the price would be expected to be released, viewers of the EIA page instead were greeted with an announcement that the information would be delayed by an indeterminate period.

In its statement released Monday, the EIA said it had discovered a “voltage irregularity” on June 17. 

“This issue prevented us from processing and releasing several reports last week, and unfortunately, it continues to affect our ability to release data this week,” the EIA said. 

The EIA said hardware has been replaced and data transfer is ongoing.

The statement by the EIA reiterated that the agency has been “able to collect data throughout the outage and subsequent restoration. We will release the data that was scheduled for publication last week, including our U.S. average gasoline and diesel prices for June 20, 2022.”

In an email to FreightWaves, EIA spokesman Chris Higginbotham reiterated that processes are in place that will allow the agency to gather data Monday for an eventual publication of a diesel price for June 27 as well as June 20.

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