Without a doubt, one of the biggest factors affecting the trucking industry, and thus by extension the service truck industry, is the cost of oil, diesel, and gasoline, which has risen by leaps and bounds—doubling in just the past year alone.
Examining price data obtained from the US Energy Information Administration, our friends at the NTEA—the association for the work truck industry—have supplied us some of the data in the following report—and the chart above.
The Brent spot price of oil reached $117 per barrel in March of 2022—the highest mark since the year 2012.
In April of 2022, however, global markets adjusted to the turmoil caused by the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, with oil prices falling to about $105 per barrel.
Last month, the May oil market prices remained volatile, with prices briefly pushing higher than $120 per barrel before falling back to about $115 by the end of the month.
The primary reason for the decline was OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) featuring 13 member countries: Algeria, Angola, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.
OPEC had hinted that it would increase oil production to compensate for the missing amount that Russia would normally supply, but was unable to owing to global communities oil embargoes against the aggressor country.
However, with supply comes demand, and what oil is not being taken by those countries observing the humanitarian embargo actions, we can be assured that other countries will.
India, for example, has become a leading purchaser of embargoed Russian oil. Russia had offered a bargain-basement price of $30 per barrel to any takers, so it’s no surprise that the offer was taken up.
According to Kpler—spelling is correct—a commodities data an analytics company, between the months of March to May of 2022, India purchased over 33 million barrels of crude oil from Russia, which was twice the amount it had purchased from them in all of 2021.
As an active trading partner with fewer countries vying for the materials, except for some mild tongue-wagging and clucking, India and China have hopped aboard the gravy train and increased their respective imports of Russian and Belarus (co-aggressor with Russia against Ukraine) coal and fertilizers, too.
For now, production volume and price of global oils are expected to remain volatile until the war in Ukraine ends, and/or until less scrupulous countries lift the oil embargoes against Russia that are, obviously, not working as well as was hoped.
To join the NTEA, visit: https://www.ntea.com/.