saufen die Amis wieder Sprit, ob das stimmt?
"GASOLINE DEMAND HIGHEST SINCE DECEMBER 2007, MASTERCARD SAYS
By Barbara Powell
July 2 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. gasoline consumption last week hit an 18-month high ahead of the traditional peak in demand over the July 4 holiday weekend, according to a MasterCard Inc. report.
Motorists bought an average 9.695 million barrels of gasoline a day in the week ended June 26, MasterCard, the second-biggest credit-card company, said in its weekly SpendingPulse report. That’s 1.6 percent above a year earlier and the most since the week ended Dec. 21, 2007.
The rise “is pretty consistent with what’s been going on over the past two to three months,” said Michael McNamara, vice president at Mastercard Advisors, in a telephone interview. “It’s pretty typical going into the July season.”
MasterCard did not release the full report for the week ended June 26. The last report published by the company was for the week ended May 29, which included sales from the three-day Memorial Day holiday. Motorists that week bought an average 9.244 million barrels of gasoline a day.
The national average pump price for regular gasoline reached a 2009 peak of $2.67 a gallon in the week ended June 19, according to the MasterCard data. Prices were 34 percent below the year-earlier average of $4.07.
Gasoline touched a record $4.10 a gallon in the week ended July 18.
“The runup in gasoline prices and the drawdown in supply implies that the EIA has probably been underreporting demand into June,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest, a Chicago-based brokerage. “We saw improved consumer confidence in May, people were feeling better that the economy was improving a little bit.”
Regional Differences
Demand in the East Coast and Gulf Coast showed a little “extra strength”, according to McNamara, while the Midwest was down from a year earlier and the West Coast was relatively flat.
Some analysts questioned the year-over-year jump in demand last week reported by Mastercard.
“No one in the industry believes that number,” said Tom Knight, trading director at Truman Arnold Cos in Texarkana, Texas. “We probably had a bottoming of demand in the first quarter and we’re probably marginally better. The real numbers from the retailers we talk to is demand is down. This implies there is no recession.”
Motor-fuel consumption was down 3.2 percent in 2008 after rising 1 percent in 2007 and 1.2 percent in 2006, MasterCard said. Demand last year peaked at 9.65 million barrels a day in the week ended Aug. 1.
“It seems unusually high,” said Sander Cohan, an analyst with Energy Security Analysis Inc in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “It would imply a big stock draw for this week and we have to wait and see those numbers.”
Retail Prices
AAA, the nation’s biggest motoring group, said on its Web site today that the average price fell 0.1 cent to $2.629 a gallon. Prices peaked at the June 21 high of $2.693, Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesman for AAA said yesterday in an telephone interview.
The July 4 holiday weekend is traditionally the high point for fuel demand, and AAA estimates that auto trips will decline 2.6 percent during the period from a year ago.
MasterCard on Jan. 13 stopped releasing to the public information from its weekly reports on gasoline demand and prices. It has since limited demand and prices to subscribers of its weekly SpendingPulse report and monthly report on U.S. retail sales.
The reports from Purchase, New York-based MasterCard are assembled by MasterCard Advisors, the company’s consulting arm. The data is based on credit-card swipes and cash and check payments at about 140,000 U.S. gasoline stations.
Visa Inc. is the biggest credit-card company by transactions processed."