The price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline remains low. Prices have gone up slightly in the past few weeks. Gasbuddy.com Senior Petroleum Analyst Patrick DeHaan says most stations raised prices to $2.45 a gallon.
“This is in line with what we would have expected. We’ve watched wholesale gasoline prices go up and in an account of some refinery kinks that occurred about a week-and-a-half ago that are still impacting the supply of gasoline and those prices. Prices, though, remain about $1.25 lower than last year. Over the coming week, I would expect some sort of minor decrease to emerge in gas prices,” said DeHaan.
As we barrel into the summer months, DeHaan believes that prices will stay at this level.
“In fact for much of the rest of this year, gas prices are likely to remain at least a dollar per gallon lower than where they were last year.”
He says the main reason for the plateau in pricing is due to domestic crude oil production which has continued to increase as well as a climate of low oil prices last fall by a shift in attitude by OPEC.
“Essentially we’re just brimming with oil – a wash in oil if you will, and that is keeping price of oil very low. Today it stands at about $50 a barrel which is about half of what it was a year ago. That’s something that probably won’t just change overnight.”
