A fuels analyst with the Iowa Department of Agriculture expects a bump up in the price of gas at the pump soon. The department released it’s latest price survey Wednesday and analyst Harold Hommes says it stuck with the spring trend.
“It’s been fairly flat for the last one to two months, we actually saw a couple cent decline in our report,” Hommes says. He sees a change on the horizon with an increase in wholesale gas prices. “Probably going to be some modest changes coming in the near term,” Hommes says. “Wholesale prices have taken a 12-cent jump in the last couple of days here, so look for some of that to be passed on. Likely going to see around a dime or so increase in the next couple of days.”
A good supply of crude oil has kept the price of oil down, but it has bumped in price recently and that has impacted gas suppliers. “I think their margins have gotten a little tighter as we’ve seen…the gradual increase in crude. It was at those pretty unprecedented lows for quite some time,” Hommes explains, “but as you approach 46 and $47 crude on West Texas intermediate, refiners seem to want to pass a bit of that along.”
Hommes doesn’t expect any uptick to become a pattern.”I’m looking for a fairly flat summer in terms of prices,” Hommes says.
Gas prices have been a little below or a little above two dollars a gallon for several months, and the latest fuel survey showed the statewide average was $2.13 cents a gallon. That is 46 cents lower than one year ago. The national average is $2.20.