As crude oil prices have rocketed dragging up the cost of everything including gasoline, there have been many complaints but no real evidence of a consumer demand eduction in the US - until now!

Mastercard Advisors reports that gasoline sales are down 1% over last year and motorists pumped an average of 9.091 million barrels per day in the week that ended May 9th. That was down 7 percent from the year-ago level. Meanwhile weekly gasoline demand dipped 0.6 percent from the previous week.

Meanwhile the API has announced similar figures. Deliveries of gasoline, a gauge of demand at the pump, fell 1.9% in April from the same month a year ago, the American Petroleum Institute said in a monthly report. It was the biggest decline since December 2000. Gasoline demand was down 0.7% in the first four months of the year compared with the same period in 2005, it said.

But.... are US drivers already adjusting their budgets for higher priced gasoline? The Energy Information Administration reported that the four-week average gasoline demand was up 0.2% last week from the same period a year ago, after falling the previous week.

As the summer driving season commences in the US many eyes will be on demand levels to see if there has been a meaningful demand response to higher prices. If yes, then perhaps some of the froth will come off crude and product futures but if no, then it's upward and onward based on the fact that supply/demand remains tight and supply disruptions continue to occur.

Interestingly enough, gas prices provoked a recent demand response at UtiliPoint as TRM practice lead Patrick Reames traded in his truck for something slightly more economical...