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December 17, 1999 10:13 AM, EST

The national average price of diesel fuel provided a little holiday cheer by dropping for the second consecutive week. But the fall to $1.288 a gallon prompted one analyst to warn that the oil market was in a purge-and-binge mindset.

	Fuel Prices
	Week of Dec. 13:
	source	price	change
	DOE	128.8	-0.6
	Comdata	127.6	-0.8
	OPIS self-serve	128.8	-0.8
	OPIS wholesale	72.0	-1.0

“We purged last week and now we are bingeing,” said Tom Kloza, editorial director of the Oil Price Information Service.

He noted that crude oil resumed its upswing after going below $25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where it hit an eight-year high of $27.07 two weeks ago, and that diesel fuel will surely follow, as it has done throughout 1999.

Bloomberg News Service rang in with a report that higher oil prices “probably contributed” to an increase in U.S. consumer prices during November.

For the full story, see the Dec. 20 print edition of Transport Topics. .