Gas prices dropped a few pennies a gallon in the last week. Iowa Department of Natural Resources fuels analyst Harold Hommes says he’s seen the drop in and around the state’s capital.
“Most here in the metro are on that two-14 mark. The state average would be a little bit higher than that, but are also certainly points in Iowa regionally that are somewhat under that two-14 mark, so that’s a pretty good competitive price now for fuels,” Hommes says. The statewide average is $2.30 a gallon.
Hommes says good supplies have push down the wholesale terminal price of gas and that’s led to a drop in the retail cost.”We’ve got a dollar-30 rack or terminal price in most points throughout Iowa, 130, 131, so that makes it a falling market,” Hommes says. “We started off the week at about 148 at the rack, so we’ve taken 18 cents down. I look for retail to fall a little bit further yet.” There are 47.5 cents of taxes added to the rack price of gasoline, so that would put the cost at around $1.47 a gallon, leaving retailers with some 80 cents in profit depending on the rack price.
Summer holidays can make gas prices go up with increased demand, but Hommes says the Thanksgiving holiday isn’t expected to see an increase. “It can lend to some temporary boosts, but the last few years frankly I haven’t seen that,” Hommes says. Hommes doesn’t see any big moves up in gas prices through the rest of this year.
“I think that we’re going to see pretty favorable prices similar to what we have right now for the next couple of weeks,” according to Hommes. “If anything I think we may even see modest retreating from current levels and probably are going to get a little closer to that $2.00 mark in the next week to ten days.” The average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline one year ago this week was $2.93.