Friday, July 12, 2013

The Fear Premium continues to push up gas prices

ABC News shows fear premium at work in Summer Bummer: Gas Prices About to Spike.

As families get ready to hit the road for vacation, gas prices are expected to rise.
The increases at the producer and wholesale levels are showing up here and jacking up prices even higher than I reported in Crude prices reflected at pump after slight delay, which made my prior predictions both right and wrong.
Prices will go up, but the $3.69 at the corner station is too high.  I still expect it to drop by the end of the week.
Prices did go up, including that at the corner station.  Thursday morning, local prices all went up, but to a wide range of levels.  The corner station raised what it charged for regular to $3.79.  The three outlets down the street had prices from $3.59 to $3.79.  When I returned home last night, all three of the stations matched what the corner station had been charging at $3.79 and the corner station increased their price to $3.85.  Eep!  By this afternoon, the corner station had dropped its price to conform with the rest of the local stations at $3.79.  About the best I could salvage from my prediction is that the price at the corner station fell all right, but from 16 cents higher than I expected.

As for what future holds, I tend to believe the ABC News report, which means that prices should drop a little bit from the current high.  Given that today's price for Brent crude closed at $108.81, which should translate to $3.56, slightly below the $3.58-$3.59 national average, I expect prices to fall to the $3.59 level by the end of the month.  Here's to hoping that prediction comes true.

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