The cost of filling up your car is about to go higher.
Seasonal influences account for much of the expected increase that many analysts say will push gasoline (at a nationwide average of $2.70 yesterday) to at least $3 a gallon this spring. Rising oil prices also are a factor in higher gasoline prices.
Wholesale prices for the April gasoline contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange are about 10 to 12 cents higher than the March contract, which expired Friday. Much of the rise comes from refiners’ switching to more expensive summer blends of gasoline designed to meet tougher pollution standards in effect between April and September. The higher prices should make their way to the pump over the next few weeks.
At $3 per gallon, a typical motorist using 50 gallons of gasoline would pay about $150 per month for fuel. That is about $15 a month more than current prices, according to OilPrice Information Service.
Prices have moved higher the past two weeks, approaching the 2010 high of $2.7583 per gallon set on Jan. 14. In the past week prices climbed 5.7 cents and are now 78.4 cents higher than year ago levels.
Oh Goody
Yay! Rising oil prices means that as demand goes down, prices go up, right? Couldn’t have anything to do with manipulation of our “free” markets, right? Par for the course in our recoveryless recovery with its negative growth.
Thank you, Jay, for posting what I was about to: The extremely high oil prices, even when times were better economically, turned out to the results of market manipulation.
And that has continued as of late, with the likes of Goldman having so much almost free money sloshing around they needed somewhere to park it. Oil, babeee!
The US press will rarely report, and certainly not will not repeat the news, things like market manipulation and Goldman’s or hedgefunders’ tankers filled with oil waiting for the price to rise. And they can push it up by buying up what they can…for awhile.
And our Dems do what about this? Pass programs to allow us to place solar collectors on our roofs or in our yards to cut emissions and our dependence on foreign oil suppliers? Keep waiting…. Send in the ponies!
God forbid Exxon cut profits so that we have cleaner air to breathe.
I for one believe that reducing our consumption and increasingly efficient use of the oil we import would do more to reduce our “cost” than anything else short of discovering a way to make nuclear fusion a practical alternative. This is a problem that we should approach from multiple directions, but one avenue should include investments in better mass transit, for less reliance on personal automobiles for everyday travel. Such an investment also would reduce the pain to the average person even if prices go sky-high (which they probably will anyway, whether the prices have been manipulated by speculators or due to increased demand from growing economies like India/China/Brazil).
Your article says $3.00. I read a similar article, including word for word that bit about the refiners, that posited $3.25. Right now they are just throwing price points against the wall to see what will stick so they can raise prices to that level.
of course they need to drive up stock prices with this before the next crash…coming this september when the oil prices suddenly drop again? bubble, crash, bubble, crash…how else is gs supposed to make their obscene profits and create maximum suffering for the rest of us?