Western Governments Struggle to Set Russian Oil Price Cap Before Dec. 5 - Insurance Journal

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Western governments want to set a maximum purchase price for Russian oil on the world market to limit Moscow’s ability to raise money for its war on Ukraine.

The plan is meant to punish Russia while at the same time keeping its vast petroleum exports flowing to energy-starved global markets to tamp down inflation.

But so far, the countries have failed to agree on what the price limit should be, reflecting divisions over how badly the scheme should seek to hurt Moscow.

Insurers Still Unclear How G-7 Sanctions on Russian Crude Oil Cargoes Will Work

The clock is ticking.

If they can’t reach a deal by Dec. 5, an outright ban on Russian imports into the European Union will take effect, crimping supplies heading into peak winter heating season.

Here is what you need to know:

WHO’S IN THE PRICE CAP COALITION?

The Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — and the EU are hammering out details of the plan.

The G7 had proposed the idea because Russia supplies 10% of the world’s oil and losing it would shock the global market.

The EU had earlier agreed to impose an outright ban on Russian oil imports starting Dec. 5. But with the bloc suffering with thin inventories and high prices heading into winter, governments want to sidestep the ban.

The United States also imposed an outright ban on Russian oil imports after Russia invaded Ukraine, and it intends to keep that in place regardless of whether a price cap is agreed.

WHAT IS THE PRICE UNDER DISCUSSION?

The G7 has proposed a cap in the range of $65-70 per barrel. But the EU can’t find consensus.

Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have been pushing for a price cap that is much lower – $30 per barrel – arguing that anything higher provides Moscow too much profit.

Other nations think that level is too low.

Global benchmark oil prices are currently around $85 a barrel with Russian crude already trading at a steep discount at around $63.50.

Russia’s cost of production for oil is estimated at around $20 a barrel.

HOW WOULD IT WORK?

The plan – if it is ever finalized – would require participating countries to deny Western-dominated services including insurance, finance, and brokering cargoes priced above the cap.

The scheme would apply to all Russian oil cargoes loaded after 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT) on Dec. 5, and docking after Jan. 12, according to recent guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department.

The U.S. guidance further sketched out which types of companies would be obligated to participate in the cap plan. They include trading and commodities brokers, and companies involved in financing, shipping, insurance, flagging, and customs brokering.

While U.S. companies would be allowed to handle Russian cargoes priced at or below the cap, those cargoes would still be banned from U.S. shores.

IS IT ENFORCEABLE?

G7 officials believe the plan would work because the London-based International Group of Protection & Indemnity Clubs provides marine liability cover for about 95% of the global oil shipping fleet.

But traders point to parallel fleets that can handle Russian oil using Russian and other non-Western insurance. It remains uncertain how many ports around the world will accept Russian-insured ships.

The plan could backfire in other ways too.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will withhold exports to countries that enforce the cap, something that could undermine the plan’s intention of keeping Russian oil flowing to the EU.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Photograph: Arctic shuttle tanker Shturman Albanov; Photo credit: Sovcomflot

Topics Russia Energy Oil Gas

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EU inches towards deal on Russian oil price cap this week - Reuters

BRUSSELS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - European Union countries are inching towards a deal this week on a price cap on Russian oil, a way to adjust the cap in future, and on linking it to a package of new sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, diplomats said on Tuesday.

The deadline for a deal is Dec. 5 because that is when the EU's own full embargo on purchases of Russian seaborne oil, agreed at the end of May, kicks in.

The price cap, a softer measure proposed by the Group of Seven (G7) nations, is supposed to replace the tougher EU plan to protect global supply and prevent a price surge, but there is disagreement among the 27 EU countries on the level of the cap.

"Consultations have been ongoing since last Wednesday and we are inching towards an agreement, we are closer and closer," one senior EU diplomat involved in the negotiations said.

Last Wednesday, representatives of EU governments debated for the first time a price cap level that would still provide an incentive for Moscow to sell, but at a much smaller profit.

The G7 proposal, presented to EU governments by the European Commission, was a price cap in the range of $65-70 per barrel - a level that diplomats said was fixed in September when Russian oil traded at $68-76 per barrel on the market.

"The idea was that a cap of around 5% below the market price would work to make the Russians sell while reducing their revenues," a second senior diplomat said. "But since then prices have kept falling and are now below the cap level, so that level achieves no objective," he said.

Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, therefore, rejected the G7 proposal saying the cap should be closer to Russian production costs, which are estimated at about $20-25 per barrel. The three countries, which all border Russia, back a $30 price cap.

They also argued that, given changing global oil markets and Russia's ability to finance the war, the price cap should not be set in stone, but be a dynamic tool that could be reviewed often under a mechanism yet to be agreed.

They also noted that revenue assumptions in the Russian budget for 2023 were based on oil prices at $65 per barrel, so setting the price cap at that level would do nothing to curb Moscow's ability to finance its war on Ukraine.

Since adopting the G7 proposal would be an effective easing of already agreed EU sanctions, the three countries said the EU should compensate for that by adopting a new sanctions package against Russia.

This could involve adding more Russian individuals to the list of people who cannot enter the EU and whose EU assets would be frozen, banning more Russian state-controlled media outlets from broadcasting in Europe, disconnecting more Russian banks from the global SWIFT payments system, and putting export restrictions on more EU products that Russia could use for both civilian and military purposes.

In a nod to these demands, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said last week the EU executive arm was "working full speed on a ninth sanctions package".

EU government representatives are meeting again on Wednesday and Thursday for regular talks. The oil price cap has not been added to their agenda, but still could be, diplomats said.

They also said talks would continue in smaller groups, and between EU and G7 countries, to find a deal before Monday.

Reporting by Jan Strupczewski Editing by Mark Potter

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Oil Prices Jump On Major Crude Draw - OilPrice.com

Charles Kennedy

Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com

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By Charles Kennedy - Nov 29, 2022, 5:30 PM CST

China is ready to work for a closer partnership with Russia in the energy sector, Chinese President Xi Jinping was quoted as saying on Tuesday, days before the EU embargo on seaborne imports of Russian crude oil and the G7-EU price cap on Russia’s oil are set to enter into force next week.

“Energy cooperation is an important cornerstone of practical cooperation between China and Russia, and also a positive force for maintaining global energy security,” Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying in a letter to a China-Russia Energy Business Forum.

“Xi also said the Chinese side stands ready to join hands with Russia to push for clean and green energy development, and safeguard international energy security and the stability of industrial and supply chains, thereby making new contributions to the long-term, healthy and sustainable development of the global energy market,” Xinhua reported.

China is now the biggest outlet for Russia’s crude oil after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the EU bans and embargoes forced Moscow to re-route most of its crude exports to the biggest Asian buyers, China and India.

China’s energy imports from Russia, including coal, oil, and natural gas, have reached $60 billion since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reported earlier this month, up from $35 billion in the same period of 2021.

China has become Russia’s biggest energy client alongside India, with both countries refusing to join the Western sanction push against Moscow and instead opting to continue doing business and forging closer political ties with Russia.

Reports have emerged in recent weeks that some Chinese buyers have become wary of purchasing spot Russian cargoes loading after December 5, waiting for details about the price cap and the potential consequences for buyers.

Still, China has no intention of joining any price cap mechanisms, and it is said to be demanding deep discounts from Russia for its crude. 

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Defying forecasts, crude oil prices have wiped out most of this year's gains and could head lower - CNBC

In this article

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• @CL.1

Tom Kaye of Plymouth, Pennsylvania tops off his neighbor's gas tank for them on at a gas station in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 19, 2022. 

Aimee Dilger | Reuters

Oil prices are defying expectations and are barely higher on the year, as the outlook for oil demand continues to deteriorate for now.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures for January settled higher Monday at $77.24 per barrel, following a drop to $73.60 per barrel, the lowest price since last December. WTI was up 2.2% for the year, after briefly turning negative earlier Monday.

Gasoline prices at the pump have also been falling dramatically and could be cheaper than last year for many Americans by Christmas, according to an outlook from the Oil Price Information Service. On Monday, the national average was $3.546 per gallon of regular unleaded fuel, down from $3.662 a week ago but still higher than the $3.394 a year ago, according to AAA.

Loading chart...

China's Covid latest lockdowns have significantly changed the outlook for oil, which some experts had predicted could spike to $150 per barrel or more after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While crude futures briefly wiped out their gains for 2022 Monday morning, they had been as much as 70% higher on the year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent WTI to about $130 a barrel last March.

'Macro headwinds rather than tailwinds'

China's lockdowns and the rare protests against Beijing this weekend have raised more doubt about the outlook for the country's already weakened economy.

"We think the recessionary [forces] around the world, particularly in the three largest economies, are dominating the macro environment for the year as a whole, and we think that the issues we've been identifying as relatively bumpy in the period ahead are going to remain," said Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup. "Right now, we are looking at macro headwinds rather than tailwinds."

Morse was one of the more bearish strategists on Wall Street in 2022, but he said the latest market developments and the hit to major economies made even his forecast too bullish. He had revised his outlook higher at the end of the third quarter, based on the shift by OPEC+ to focus on prices and the pending ban of Russian crude by Europe.

The oil market has been focused on those two potential catalysts for higher prices, but the impact on demand from the slowdown in China and new lockdowns has outweighed concerns about supply for now. The European Union's ban on purchases of seaborne Russian oil takes place Dec. 5. The EU is also expected to announce price caps for Russian crude.

OPEC+ is also a factor. The group includes OPEC, plus other producers, including Russia. The group surprised the market in October when it approved a production cut of 2 million barrels a day.

"We're waiting to see if they signal even deeper cuts. There were rumors in the market about that happening," said John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital. After dipping to the day's lows, oil rebounded on Monday as speculation circulated about new OPEC+ cuts, he said.

Brent futures, the international benchmark, was lower Monday afternoon at $83.19 per barrel, recovering from $80.61 per barrel, the lowest price since January.

"Right now the target is below $60 [for WTI]. That's what the chart is indicating... this is a new low for the move because previously the low for the year was late September and now we've broken that," said Kilduff. "It all depends on what happens in China. China is as important on the demand side, as OPEC+ is on the supply side."

Higher oil prices next year?

Analysts expect oil prices to increase next year. JPMorgan predicts Brent will average $90 per barrel in 2023.

Morgan Stanley expects the return of much higher prices mid-year, after China ends lockdowns.

"Our balances point to modest oversupply in coming months. Hence, we see Brent prices range-bound in the mid-80s to high-90s first," the firm's analysts wrote. "However, the market will likely return to balance in 2Q23 and undersupply in 2H23. With limited supply buffer, we expect Brent to return to ~$110/bbl by the middle of next year."

Kilduff said he does not expect OPEC+ to make a big market impact this year with its cuts, though it is a wild card. Another factor that could drive prices would be if the war in Ukraine were to escalate.

"I'm not that worried about an OPEC+ cut just because the reality of it is most of the countries aren't going to be cutting. It's only going to be Saudi Arabia dialing back on the edges," he said. "Everyone is so far into their quota. It's a numbers game."

Morse said market dynamics have changed and oil demand growth will be smaller as a percentage of gross domestic product. "We're seeing a significant slowdown in global growth," he said.

Oil demand growth for China turned out to be much less than expected. "We were thinking demand was sluggish. It turned out to be significantly more sluggish... We had thought this year was going to see 3.4 million barrels of demand growth. It actually grew by 1.7 million barrels," Morse said. He noted that Europe's demand is down by several hundred thousand barrels, and the U.S. was flat in 2022.

Morse said the demand decline is also part of bigger trend, tied in part to the energy transition toward renewables. "We are also looking for the peak of oil demand in this decade. It's part of a longer term story," he said.

The weather's influence

Kilduff said La Niña's weather pattern has also affected prices, with warmer weather in North America. He and other analysts say it could continue to impact the market.

"We keep getting cold outlooks, and then it falters. This is La Niña. You will get cold days, but then you get balmy stretches," Kilduff said. He said concerns about winter heating fuel supplies have abated with a build in supplies in Europe.

The result for consumers could be a windfall at the pump during the holiday season. OPIS expects prices to keep falling into January before turning higher again.

"If you combine the Chinese demonstrations with the warm weather in the northern hemisphere, that's kind of a double-barreled assault on the energy price at the moment," said Tom Kloza, global energy analyst at OPIS. He said he expects gasoline to average between $3 and $3.25 per gallon at its low, but it will be below $3 in many parts of the country.

Kloza said by Christmas, the U.S. national average should be slightly below the $3.28 level it was at last year.

Diesel prices have also been falling. According to AAA, diesel averaged $5.215 per gallon nationally Monday, off by about 8 cents per gallon from a week ago.

"We've been counter-seasonally building distillate fuel supply so that's been easing things. If the weather stays relatively benign here, we're going to lose that upside catalyst and grind lower still," said Again's Kilduff.

--Michael Bloom contributed to this story.

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Most Common U.S. Gas Price Now $2.99 As Prices Keep Plunging - Forbes

Topline

The most common price for a gallon of regular gas at U.S. pumps fell to $2.99 Monday, according to data from GasBuddy, while the nation's average price fell to the lowest level since around the time Russia started its invasion of Ukraine.

Key Facts

Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, tweeted Monday that $2.99 a gallon had overtaken $3.39 for the most common price at the roughly 150,000 gas stations the company tracks.

The most common price is a different metric from average price, which is around $3.51 a gallon—still the lowest recorded in the U.S. since February.

Prices are generally cheapest across the South and Midwest, led by Texas, which has a statewide average of $2.82 a gallon and has counties reporting average prices as low as $2.63 a gallon.

Average prices are also under $3 a gallon in Oklahoma ($2.92), Arkansas ($2.98), Mississippi ($2.99) and Louisiana ($2.999).

Contra

Prices remain highest in the West, topped by the $5.15 a gallon average in Hawaii. California is next with average prices of $4.95 a gallon, but that's significantly lower than prices there over the summer, which soared well above $6 a gallon.

Crucial Quote

"It’s entirely possible the national average price of gasoline could fall under $3 per gallon by Christmas, which would be a huge gift to unwrap for motorists after a dizzying year at the pump," De Haan said in a Monday analysis.

Key Background

A historic surge in gas prices during the spring and summer caused headaches for many Americans and became one of the most obvious signs of the nation's rampant inflation. The price spike was driven by numerous factors, such as the Russian invasion, a refusal by OPEC to significantly increase production and diminishing U.S. refining capacity, but prices in June started trending downward at a similarly historic pace. The primary reason for the drop has been a decrease in fuel demand while more gasoline has hit the market. According to GasBuddy, demand fell by 5% last week compared to the week before, though Americans pre-filling tanks before Thanksgiving celebrations contributed to the decline.

Further Reading

As U.S. Gas Prices Top $5, Here Are The States Where It’s Most Expensive And Cheapest (Forbes)

U.S. Gas Prices Drop Close To $4 A Gallon—Here Are The States Where It’s Already Cheaper (Forbes)

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EU fails to agree on Russian oil price cap, say diplomats - Reuters

BRUSSELS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - European Union governments failed to agree on Monday on a price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil, as Poland insisted that the cap had to be set lower than proposed by the G7 to cut Moscow's ability to finance its invasion of Ukraine, diplomats said.

"There is no deal. The legal texts have now been agreed, but Poland still can't agree to the price," one diplomat said. No new date for talks has been set yet, diplomats said, even though the price cap mechanism is to enter into force on Dec. 5.

If there was no agreement on the G7 price cap idea by next Monday, the EU would implement harsher measures agreed at the end of May - a ban on all Russian crude oil imports from Dec. 5 and on petroleum products from Feb. 5, Polish diplomats said.

Hungary and two other landlocked central European states secured exemptions from that ban for the pipeline imports they rely on.

The Group of Seven (G7) nations has proposed a softer version of the EU ban to keep oil supply to the global economy steady, because Russia supplies 10% of the world's oil.

It proposed that the EU and other global customers keep buying Russian crude, but only if its price is at or below a G7 agreed level. That would cut the Kremlin's revenues.

The G7 has proposed a cap of $65-70 per barrel, but Poland and some others argue this will not hurt Moscow because Russian crude is already trading below that range at $63.50 .

With Russian production costs estimated at around $20, Moscow has a very large profit from its oil exports. Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have been pushing for a price cap of $30 per barrel.

"The Poles are completely uncompromising on the price, without suggesting an acceptable alternative," the EU diplomat said. "Clearly there is growing annoyance with the Polish position."

Malta, Cyprus and Greece were worried the G7 cap proposal was too low, hitting their large shipping industries, but diplomats said they got some concessions in the legal texts and were no longer an obstacle to a deal.

The idea to enforce the G7 cap is to prohibit shipping, insurance and re-insurance companies from handling cargoes of Russian crude around the globe, unless it is sold for less than the price set by the G7 and its allies.

Because the world's key shipping and insurance firms are based in G7 countries, the price cap would make it very difficult for Moscow to sell its oil for a higher price.

Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Alex Richardson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Oil and Gas Price Caps: The EU and US Negotiations Are Deeply Pointless - Bloomberg

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Oil and Gas Price Caps: The EU and US Negotiations Are Deeply Pointless  Bloomberg

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Marshall County's average home sold for a higher price year over year - Gadsden Times

Chicken is up, beef is down: What’s going on with meat prices right now? - The Hill

(NEXSTAR) – The price of your average grocery run is nearly 8% higher this year when compared to last, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the prices of everything in your cart aren’t all trending the same: while apples have gotten 5% more expensive, the cost of breakfast cereal is up nearly 25%.

In the meat department, prices aren’t being affected equally either. Chicken and turkey have risen by 17% since last October. Meanwhile, the cost of beef and veal is actually down 3.6%.

What’s behind the divergence in meat prices?

“The increase in chicken prices is mostly due to very strong consumer demand this year along with increased production (mostly feed) costs,” explained Derrell Peel, who teaches agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University and specializes in livestock.

Easing inflation isn’t making these grocery items any cheaper, data shows

Peel said bird flu isn’t really responsible for driving up the cost of “broilers,” which are chickens raised for meat production, but it has had impacts elsewhere in the grocery store. Avian influenza has wreaked havoc on chickens used for egg production – egg prices are up a whopping 43% year over year – and hit turkeys pretty hard, too. The strain of the flu wiped out 49 million turkeys and other poultry so far this year, the Associated Press reported, leaving turkey prices at a record high.

Rodney Holcomb, also an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University, noted that the cost of chicken feed has also risen, and those costs are passed on to consumers. Not to mention the cost of fuel – consumers are already paying more to fill up their own cars, but they’re also paying for that added cost all the way down the supply chain. “That’s part of increased costs for everything,” Holcomb said.

Cost of Thanksgiving dinner up 20%: Here’s where it’s most expensive

Beef demand has remained strong, Peel said, so there are other forces at play allowing prices to drop a bit. As the U.S. exports less beef this year, there could be some “jockeying” in the beef markets, with lowered prices to stir up more domestic demand. Earlier this year, Tyson Foods said it would drop some of its meat prices in response to drooping demand for premium cuts.

Since last year, uncooked steaks and roasts have seen the largest drop in prices, and the price of ground beef has stayed about the same. However, “the most expensive middle meats, ribeye and tenderloin have increased this fall,” Peel noted.

One type of meat has seen a massive price spike this year. Lunchmeats cost 19% more than they did a year ago, according to government statistics. Elsewhere in the grocery store, cookies, crackers, white bread, lettuce, frozen vegetables and salad dressing have all seen their prices rise between 15% and 20%.

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Bayonetta 3 Is On Sale For A Great Price At Amazon - GameSpot

Bayonetta 3, one of the newest high-profile Nintendo Switch releases, is on sale for only $45 at Amazon. It's the lowest price we've seen so far since the game launched in late October. Bayonetta 3 comes highly recommended from reviewers across the board, including here at GameSpot. Our Bayonetta 3 review scored the game a 9/10, calling it a "show-stopping spectacle."

See at Amazon

Bayonetta 3 was developed by Platinum Games and launched on October 28. Some of the discourse surrounding the game's launch was around voice actor Hellena Taylor, who was omitted from the game amid a contract dispute, with Jennifer Hale signing on to play Bayonetta instead.

There are lots of other great Switch deals available now ahead of Black Friday, including a juicy discount on Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The best Switch controller is also on sale for Black Friday.

For more deals, check out GameSpot's Black Friday 2022 deals hub and more deals featured in the gallery below.

Best Cyber Monday Gaming Deals Available Now

See More

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

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Meet the Man on a Mission to Expose Sneaky Price Increases - The New York Times

SOMERVILLE, Mass. — A few weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky got a promising tip by email. “Diluted cough syrup,” read the message, accompanied by a photo of two packages of syrup with a curious difference: The new one appeared to be half the strength of the old one.

Mr. Dworsky gets emails like this frequently, alerting him to things like a bag of dog food that discreetly shrank from 50 pounds to 44 pounds. A cereal box that switched from “giant” to “family” size and grew about an inch taller — but a few ounces lighter. Bottles of detergent that look the same, but the newer ones come with less detergent.

The cough syrup message looked intriguing. Mr. Dworsky made plans to investigate.

He has dedicated much of his life to exposing what is one of the sneakier tricks in the modern consumer economy: “shrinkflation,” when products or packaging are subtly manipulated so that a person pays the same price, or even slightly more, for something but gets less of it.

Consumer product companies have been using this strategy for decades. And their nemesis, Mr. Dworsky, has been following it for decades. He writes up his discoveries on his website, mouseprint.org, a reference to the fine print often found on product packaging. Print so tiny “only a mouse could read,” he says.

He writes about shrinkflation in everything — tuna, mayonnaise, ice cream, deodorant, dish soap — alongside other consumer advocacy work on topics like misleading advertising, class-action lawsuits and exaggerated sale claims.

One recent Mouse Print report explored toilet paper shrinkflation. “Virtually every brand of toilet paper has been downsized over the years,” Mr. Dworsky wrote, documenting more than a decade of toilet paper shrinkage.

“Virtually every brand of toilet paper has been downsized over the years,” Mr. Dworsky wrote on his website.Simon Simard for The New York Times

Mr. Dworsky, 71, is a semiretired lawyer whose career began as a market researcher before briefly becoming an on-air consumer reporter for local television alongside a young Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News personality. Mr. Dworsky was “one of the most sincere broadcasters I’ve ever seen,” Mr. O’Reilly said recently, adding that Mr. Dworsky “wasn’t one of those slick broadcasters trying to sell something.”

At the height of his career, he worked with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, on his way to becoming a self-employed consumer advocate and possibly the world’s foremost expert on shrinkflation.

Lately, Mr. Dworsky has had his work cut out for him. With inflation at a 40-year high, business owners have been increasingly shrinkflating their products in an attempt to hide price increases.

Companies are doing it out of necessity, said Krishnakumar Davey, president of consumer product goods at IRI, a market research company. “Manufacturers are facing huge costs,” he said, referring to the price of raw ingredients, labor and shipping. “They’re trying to figure out how to balance that.”

Mr. Dworsky works seven days a week from his modest, three-bedroom condo in Somerville, where he lives alone. But for him, thrift is more than a job, it’s a lifestyle. He made less than $7,000 last year, mostly from donations and ad revenue. He gets by on Social Security, his state pension and savings.

He’s quick with one-line zingers about his own frugality: I preach what I practice. Splurge isn’t a word in my vocabulary. People go duck hunting or deer hunting. I’m bargain hunting!

Procter & Gamble, which makes Dawn dish soap, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Photo illustration by The New York Times; Photo by Simon Simard.

One recent Thursday, Mr. Dworsky started his day at 4:45 a.m. with breakfast of a store-bought coffee cake muffin and a glass of apple juice before checking his email and scanning the web for consumer news to include in his newsletter and his other website, Consumer World.

Then he turned his attention to shrinkflation. Already that day, he had two television interviews lined up to discuss the downsizing of Halloween candy.

In interviews, he’s the same person he is off-camera: simultaneously goofy and serious, affable yet awkward. Mr. Dworsky ran through the details of his candy investigations, pointing out that some manufacturers have defended smaller products by saying they have fewer calories. But on Halloween, kids don’t care, he said. “They just want some good candy.”

With inflation rattling the nation, shrinkflation recently drew the attention of John Oliver, who noted Mr. Dworsky’s quirky TV presence. “News outlets love to cover this, usually with the help of what seems to be the one go-to expert on the topic,” Mr. Oliver said, rolling clips of Mr. Dworsky emphatically listing examples of downsized products like toothpaste and sports drinks.

“Yeah! You tell ’em, Ed!” Mr. Oliver says. “I love everything about that man.”

Mr. Dworsky’s work has received notice in academic circles as well. Joseph Balagtas, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University who has studied shrinkflation, said Mr. Dworsky was the only person he was aware of who is documenting the phenomenon. Hitendra Chaturvedi, a supply chain management professor at Arizona State University, said he had turned to Mr. Dworsky’s examples to build the data sets for his own research.

Before setting out to investigate the cough syrup tip, Mr. Dworsky made himself lunch, a seafood wrap from his bargain-hunted pantry. He can rattle off the prices of virtually everything in it. The imitation crab meat had gone up recently to $5.99 for a 2.5 pound package but was still “a great deal.” The celery set him back $1.50, the most he ever spent on celery, he said.

Then he hit the road. First stop, a Walgreens.

It’s difficult to catch shrinkflation, he said. But if he’s lucky, he can find examples in stores when new inventory arrives, putting newer and older packages on the same shelf side-by-side.

Mr. Dworsky also looks out for clues like “New and improved” on packaging. But most importantly, he examines the weight.

“Look at the products you buy all the time, note what the net weight is,” he said. “When you go back to the store, double check that it’s still the same as your last bag, box or bottle.”

The maker of Smart Balance said the company had modified some products “to make them easier to spread” but would revert to the earlier formula based on consumer feedback.Photo illustration by The New York Times; Photo by Simon Simard.

But the case of the cough syrup would be even trickier to investigate, he said, because it’s a possible case of what he calls skimpflation. He would need to examine whether the contents were, in effect, watered down — changing the formulation so that people were paying the same for fewer doses of cough syrup. The tipster had sent in images from a supermarket-brand, similar to Robitussin DM, showing that the adult dose had doubled to 20 milliliters for the new bottle, from 10 milliliters for the old.

Mr. Dworsky wondered if other stores’ versions had done the same. He spent nearly two hours visiting five different drugstore chains. He was hoping to find both new and old products at the same pharmacies, to catch them red-handed.

Mr. Dworsky is accustomed to being a bit of an outsider. He said he had inherited what he called the “cheap gene” from his father and recalled a childhood spending weekends at his dad’s, playing with his favorite toy, a cardboard supermarket. He’d sit inside and bag up mini boxes of cereal and oatmeal.

He spent much of his career in consumer education for the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation and as an assistant attorney general in consumer protection.

His boss at the time, Robert Sherman, remembered Mr. Dworsky walking into his office in the early 1990s with two packages of deodorant. “What do you see?” he recalled Mr. Dworsky asking.

Mr. Sherman thought the two packages were exactly the same. But no. “This one has more than the other one, the difference is the size of the cap,” Mr. Dworsky said.

Of course, manufacturers are free to change their product sizes at will. But Mr. Dworsky put together an office news release, wanting to spread the word to shoppers that they should look out for sneaky price increases.

Mr. Dworsky said he looks out for clues like “new and improved” on packaging.Simon Simard for The New York Times

It was the birth of his professional focus on shrinkflation.

In interviews with nearly a dozen people who have worked with Mr. Dworsky over the years, it’s clear that consumer advocacy is his life’s work. He has never been married, has no children, and at one point, in jest, referred to his shrinkflation discoveries as his family. “All my children are my favorites,” he said. “It’s hard to single out one as the best.”

Recently, Mr. Dworsky has been thinking about his legacy. He believes his biggest impact was writing the Massachusetts food store item pricing law in 1987, which set up rules around price transparency. Currently, he’s fighting against “digital discount” coupons, which he thinks are harder for seniors to access because they require technical skill to use.

His interest in cough syrup continued into November with more research. He plans to reveal his findings on Mouse Print, but in an interview he said he believed it was a case where Robitussin had changed its formula several years ago and its store-brand competitors had just recently followed.

A spokeswoman for Haleon, the manufacturer of Robitussin, said, “While we continually innovate our formulations to meet the evolving needs of consumers, the quality and integrity of our products is always paramount.”

Mr. Dworsky worries that consumer advocacy is a dying profession, and gets frustrated at how hard it is to uncover these examples. “There’s kind of almost a resignation that these are so difficult to find,” he said. “It takes someone with an eagle eye.”

But he’s celebrating his cough-syrup findings. “It’s an absolute high,” he said. “I hit gold!”

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