Comment on the January 14 prediction: Prices have been dropping since the start of the year, so CORRECT.
Saturday, January 23, 2016, 9:00AM: So much for “gas prices bottom out in December each year”, as things have been crazy this month, including a serious gas price war in Houghton Lake, and the price of oil plunging below $27 a barrel before recovering late in the week. It is difficult to explain what is going on: too much supply? hedge fund blow up? early signs of an election-year recession? But we are here to help you navigate retail gas prices, and here is the current outlook: wholesale prices continue to fall in tandem with the price of oil, and I estimate a price to retailers this week in the neighborhood of $1.50 a gallon. With a lot of $1.57’s around town this morning, we are getting close to price reset territory. So, my strategy would be to fill up Monday morning, and maybe again Tuesday morning, expecting a price hike this week. Of course, if wholesale prices start bouncing around again next week, all bets are off. — EA
prices are getting close to $1.50 in the NW Ohio RT 20 corridor this weekend- given the “dead cat bounce” in oil prices on Friday (up almost 10%) which will probably push spot prices for gas up we are right on the spike line come Monday so sense a reset to $1.799 coming early in the week
gas buddy today is reporting prices around 30 cent a gallon less than this time last year so things are better than then. Everything is so volatile right now so who knows which way things will go..but right now looks like sub $2.00 gas may be around for a bit longer than last year at least
$1.34 in Greenville, Sunday the 24th…. I would would fill up now….with prices at or below wholesale prices!
I am waiting for Iran to pour out their oil, on the world market, wondering how low oil will go….Any opinions?
Filled up in Aurora,IN at $1.449 this evening and will take the other car to fill up tomorrow at $1.399 on the way to work. We are as low as $1.259 North of Cincinnati but I don’t expect that to last through Monday.
My hope for Iran coming on line. Hopefully they throttle up the spigot and keep Brent under $40/bbl. The best thing that can come out of this is to have Iran be useful idiots and confound the Saudis/OPEC with constantly exceeding OPEC production limits making it fall apart, much the same way Iraq and Saddam Hussein used to do.
$1.26 for gasoline the the Flint area while $1.32 and $1.33 in the Greenville (Mi) market at this printing for the lowest prices in Michigan.
I’d fill up but I already keep the tank full so maybe …I know…LETS GO FOR A RIDE…just like the old days and USE SOME FUEL! With gas at this price its at the same inflation adjusted price it was in 1971. OK EVERYONE, BLAME THE PRESIDENT!
I’m in the Lansing area and filled up everything I had this morning for $1.37, which probably means prices are going much, much lower.
$1.799 spike underway in Ohio.
$1.79 in Grand Rapids, MI also.
South Bend IN – Speedway going up to $1.79. The 2 by Notre Dame went up $0.30 today. Costco went down from $1.45 to $1.39 today. SBN avg was about $1.51.
Niles MI seems steady at $1.56-$1.69 so far.
Grand Rapids up to $1.79
Kzoo 1.79
Yep, time to go up. Fort Wayne’s WOWO just reported on gas declining 15¢ in the last week and how the decline is to continue. Time to spike. !!!!!!
Same thing here. The TV/radio stations get the AAA fuel reports on Mondays.
Heading to $1.79 in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area as well. But with Iraq’s announcement of record oil production in December, Oil dropped almost 6% today.
Strange to see a station (Speedway) spike to $1.799 while a UDF held fast at $1.299…. No one outside of the Midwest understands these dramatic spikes… I mean, $0.50 in a day…..
I managed to get to the brand new Circle K in Reading (North of Cincy)late this afternoon where Regular there and the United Dairy across the street was $1.259. Drove past there 4-1/2 hours later and the Speedway Zone pricing hit there, up to $1.799, 14 cents higher that Circle K premium was just 5 hours ago.
Just finished putting my GB price reports in and four out of five of my reports were met with “This price seems high…” Thanks GREEDway.
Spike to lock in gains… Standard playbook maneuver.
Filled up the Fit today. $12.50 for 9 gallons.
GREEDway leads the way again..though it IS all relative!
Did manage to top it off at $1.299 at a Shell last week–never thought I’d see that again!
Like pretty much all of us here, I’m happy to be paying under two bucks. But when a spike entails a 53 cent “correction” Thanks to zone pricing and the market control of one or two companies. You still kinda shake your head. I’m just hoping the downtrend in prices lasts long enough to get a decent price on a nice used Prius, while that big slice is still snapping up the Canyonaro inventory
Does anyone know the current spot price? I’m curious as to what spot prices coincides with $1.799 at the pump.
Spot at 82 cents, Ohio retail at $1.799. Makes PERFECT sense……
Dayton rack average is 96c/gal. I’ll throw out a reminder Chicago spot is Chicago spot- not Dayton rack, or Cleveland rack, etc. It’s the basis for rack for the region, yes, but spot does not equal rack. Columbus rack was 97c/gal, Cincy is $1. Tack on 50c/gal in tax and a 25c/gal margin and you’re at $1.799 or so.
Ah ha. That makes a little more sense. I am curious as to why there is such a large difference(18 cents between Chicago and Ohio).
That gives them a 36.5 cent margin in Columbus, 33.5 in Cincy, little more than we though.
OH tax is 46.4 total(18.4 fed + 28 state).
While that looks like a good margin, remember that the margin there is at it’s peak since the spike just happened. Definitely hasn’t been their margin the past few weeks. I’m one of the few that wishes (unlike Patrick) that more states had the minimum markup law Wisconsin does. While you pay a few cents more, it was nice that gas followed market economics, everyone made a “small” profit and for the year I lived there I didn’t have to monkey with constantly monitoring gas prices for the next spike. Speedway also has never been able to gain a foothold there as a result. As I’m in Indy though, I will continue to play the game and accept that I am paying less for gas doing so, while trying to make my buys at the bottom.
I’m with you 100%. I would MUCH rather have the pricing model that most of the country has, rather than the spike-and-feather model that Speedway employs in their area of control. Level pricing would be SOOO nice. But, until then, I’ll play the game and win.
Maybe I care too much about other people, but I don’t think it should cost someone an extra $7-10, just because they got gas at 10:01 am vs. 10:00 am. Had I paid the spike price, it would have cost me an extra $8.10 (45 cents x 18 gallons).
About this last spike to $1.79: Even in Fort Wayne, which never seems to have a deep discounter outside SAMs and Costco, backed off the $1.79 to $1.69 almost immediately. With no deep discounts, Gasbuddy ‘s graphs almost always shows Fort Wayne many cents over the state’s average.
Chicago RFG wholesale – should be close to “rack” – down to $0.919 this morning. It’s highly unusual for Chicago (non RFG) spot – $0.777 yesterday – to be at nearly a 30 cents discount to NYMEX RBOB futures at the end of January
I agree that I would rather have a flatter pricing model in this area. But my question is, who’s at fault? I know we love to bash on Speedway, but we have shown time and again that they usually don’t spike unless their margins get low. Outside of a spike, have you ever seen prices in this area go up? And in any other area of the country do you see prices going down 2-3 cents every day like it does here? Are stations that drive our prices down as culpable for the peaks and valleys we see here as Speedway is? And when did this pattern begin? I’m getting old, and my memory is fuzzy, but I think I remember needing to fill up on Wednesdays, because it would always go up on Thursdays… in the 80s! Speedway didn’t form until the late 90s. There is so much we don’t know about this. I’d love to unlock that mystery.
They’ve been around a lot longer than that in sw Ohio. My grandfather always got gas at Speedway, and he died in 1990. Also,my father in law worked for them in the early 90s thru early 2000s, and I remember him talking frequently of “price restorations” (spikes).
The first I recall the spiking and feathers here in Fort Wayne was in the mid 1970’s about a year or so after the oil embargo. There were no speedway stations here. Only Checker, Bi-Lo, a single Hess, and Bonded. They would spike about 5 to 8¢ and spend the next week floating down. Speedway is not the original ones doing it. They learned it from some chain they bought and I believe their competitors chomp at the bit begging Speedway to join a spike so they can all make money for a bit. Speedway rarely raises prices first here, it is always Lassus/Handy Dandy. They raise the price at opening in the morning, and if nobody else joins in by noon, they lower it again. Others almost always join the spike by 10:00 AM. Speedway perfected it for sure, others learned well.
Quik Trip certainly executes this strategy in St Louis. In Illinois the Circle K/Marathon brand is so ubiquitous in Champaign-Urbana that the same price trace is seen. Speedway not the first, but certainly the biggest
Does anyone here know if they have carried this strategy into the 1000+ former Hess or Wilco-Hess stations the now own, centered in the mid-Atlantic region. Hard to imagine they would acquire them without plans to expand this profitable strategy.
I have a brother in NJ. He says the prices are “bouncing” about a nickel. He is from Toledo area and says people out there in NJ would never put up with what we put up with.
In Carmel Indiana we have a GetGo and it seems to be helping a lot – almost Costco prices then 10c off with loyalty card. I haven’t filled up anywhere else for months.
I suspect Speedway may be running out of loyal “buy at spike price THEN go inside” patrons… Hence the higher margin efforts, buyout of the competition, and so on.
Last fall I drove west to see my grad school student. I’ve learned how to time fill ups to avoid Speedway influences altogether.
At this point Speedway is not doing anyone, themselves included, any favors.not with everyone having phone apps and common sense…
Yep. We drive to my in-laws in VA twice a year(1250 miles roundtrip).
Always leave Ohio with a full tank, and don’t fill up until we’re in VA, avoiding WV, and Speedways, altogether.
I know too many people that tell me they almost never look at the price, they fill up when they need it. Too many like that keep the spikes profitable.
It’s easy to buy below cost for me with the spikes easy to avoid if you pay attention. But I don’t buy more than a couple tanks a month. Road trips are cheap if you know where to buy. Rarely do I get caught by a spike.
I read the history wrong. Speedways have been around longer, it was in the 90s they bought SuperAmerica.
If it is true, like Timm said, that spikes happened before Speedway, is it possible that there is a supplier in this area that regulates prices this way, and have for quite some time?
This paradigm of bouncing prices started in the first week of the year 2000, the start of when crude could be bought and sold on the commodities market, IIRC. I left for work on that Thursday morning, with gas prices at $1.259, maybe, and was horrified to see the price at the same station that evening at $1.459!!
An article I saw on my MSN homepage today.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/gasoline-prices-may-be-about-to-spike/ar-BBoSYNJ?li=BBnb7Kz
They might be right, Sam. WANE TV has just published a quickie report on how cheak gas is compared to last year. A sure sign it’s about to jump.
Chicago spot is below 67 cents.
based on today’s spot close..which realize is an indication of local prices not the absolute guide makes the $1.55 i just paid look expensive – still bodes well for $1.40 prices round here come the weekend..and a short winter according to the goundhog today !!!
I paid $1.259 the day of the last spike. If spot holds this week finding gas below $1.20 in places is a virtual certainty.
And I was happy when crude hit $85/bbl 17 months ago.
Crude up by 8% today. Can’t wait for the Meijer price alert text and begin of the climb. $40 crude for $2/gallon, add a refinery issue or three, another crude rally, and we could be paying $3 by summer for $55 to $60 crude.
I love this, when the API is fixing their own numbers to supplies…
“For a second week in a row, the US Weekly Petroleum Status Report revealed record breaking stockpiles of oil and gasoline, even after the American Petroleum Institute(API) offered a less modest build in its own assessment on Tuesday. And for the second week in a row, energy players, hedge funds, money managers, index investors and your garden variety speculators, defied the law of gravity in what could only be described as pure euphoria and poured money into both commodities, propping up their values beyond expectations”
Speculation did the markets and world economy in back in 2007 – $147 crude – and if left to the speculators it will happen again.
$30 is wrong for crude but so is $147 or even $100. Back then it was fear that China would buy all the oil… It was a shell game. We called it as such.
And of course we can now export crude. Another disaster waiting to happen for consumers, like the $10 a barrel tax being floated.
But who needs crude? For all we know Speedway could be refining seawater and we would still be seeing the same pricing manipulation we see now. At least we should be thankful that we have enjoyed a period with $1.50-$2.00 gas.
32 days now since Speedway’s last rather feeble hike in Chicagoland, since which the company’s average price here has dropped over 60 cents a gallon.
I am curious as to what the rack price for sw Ohio is.
Pump average of $1.55 vs spot of 66 cents seems a bit high……
Yeah, gas here in Fort Wayne is only in the mid to low $1.50’s. They seem very reluctant to drop, and we don’t have any real price cut leaders, either.
South Bend avg $1.448. Costco & a BP not far from it $1.35
Recently by Notre Dame 2 Speedways & Martins down to $1.35 also. West side Meijer $1.39.
Other side of the state line in Niles MI: Low= WMT & a Phillips $1.48, Speedway $1.49. Rest $1.50 at Admiral to $1.65 at Sunoco.