- by New Deal democrat
There’ll be lots of economic news starting tomorrow, but for today let’s pause and take a look at the energy situation.
Here’s a look at oil prices in the past year up through yesterday from CNBC:
And here’s a look over the same time period from Gas Buddy:
Here’s a close-up of gas prices for the past month:
Gas prices follow oil prices with typically a delay of several weeks. Oil prices peaked in early June, and gas prices at mid-month. Oil prices appear to have started stabilizing at the beginning of August, and gas price declines slowed down a couple of weeks later.
Finally, here’s the comparison of oil prices and gas prices (through last Wednesday, averaged weekly. Since there are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, I’ve divided oil prices by 42 to show the mark-up at retail:
With oil apparently stabilizing in the $90/barrel range, I expect gas prices to stabilize about where they are now, in the vicinity of $3.70-$3.90/gallon nationwide. This is only a short term forecast as to gas, and a nowcast as to oi.; I am not forecasting where oil prices will go from here.
But this is still very good news for consumers compared with the last 6 months.
