AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report for Friday, 07/13/18

The costs to ship fuel and crude oil from Qatar are expected to rise after the United Arab Emirates banned vessels that previously called at Qatar from docking at UAE ports, multiple sources from the oil and shipping sectors said on Monday. After Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and others last week severed diplomatic and transport links with Qatar after accusing it of sponsoring terrorism, the UAE blocked vessels carrying Qatari crude from entering the Emirates' oil ports. This is disrupting the typical logistics of the oil industry where buyers take very large crude carriers (VLCC) capable of carrying 2 million barrels of oil and load up to four different 500,000-barrel cargoes to save on costs. Buyers are now splitting cargoes on smaller Suezmax ships that carry 1 million barrels to load separately in Qatar and the UAE, the sources said. Click Read More below for more of the story.

Newsweek lost millions of dollars annually when its circulation exceeded three million, but the magazine is now profitable with a print order of only 100,000. Million-plus titles like Lucky and Ladies Home Journal are biting the dust, while every week it seems that another digital-native company announces a print magazine that has relatively minuscule circulation. Just a decade or so ago, an acquisition-minded publishing company put out word that it wouldn’t even look at a magazine that had a ratebase of less than 500,000. But now that digital media have given advertisers so many efficient ways to reach masses of consumers, scale is no longer the obvious path to publishing profitability. The digital natives entering our business have a lesson for us traditionalists: More than ever, printed magazines are the ideal medium for those who want deep engagement with a specific niche — and who are willing to pay for it.

National Average Price for Regular Unleaded Current: $2.424 Month Ago: $2.642 Year Ago: $3.432 National Average Price for Diesel Current: $2.561 Month Ago: $2.720 Year Ago: $3.801