Gas Prices Heading Downward

The soaring gas prices earlier this year are beginning to tick downward and are expected to continue doing so through the summer driving season. 

“If you liked last year’s prices, you’re probably going to like this year’s prices in that they’re going to be similar.  In fact, we’re actually below last year now,” said Tom Kloza, Chief Oil Analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall Township.  “It’s about one to fifteen cents under prices that we saw late April and early May of 2011.”

“Most markets almost always overreact in the spring and we overreacted to the upside with crude oil and gasoline and now we’re getting a little bit of a hangover from that.  So, I don’t think we’ll see dramatic changes to the downside, but I also don’t think we’re going to see big increases either,” said Kloza.

Here in the Northeast, one refinery along the Delaware River closed and another was expected to close, but there are now buyers for both which means the supply will not be as compromised as it was expected to be.

“Gasoline consumption is down three, four, five percent from last year.  My hunch is that it’ll start to creep up but we may not see a week this year that sees consumption above where it was a year ago, so something is going on out there,” said Kloza.