Monday, January 3, 2022, 8AM: Happy New Year, and welcome back to the Gas Game! We established this web site twenty years ago, in 2002, and we hope you continue to find it useful. Will we have the kind of volality in the new year that we have seen the past two? It is hard to say — that’s the part of the point of our work, is that it is almost always just short-term. However, since the pandemic started, we have seen crazy things like negative oil prices, gas prices collapsing to the $1.40’s and then surging to the $3.40’s, and retail cooridors that I follow not playing the Gas Game for weeks at a time. I suspect 2022 will not be as insane.
Going into the new year and new week, we have oil sitting at about $75 a gallon, and gas prices in west Michigan in a wide range: $2.68 to $3.19. Other than a half-hearted move to $2.99 last week that I saw in Spring Lake, we haven’t had a significant retail market reset since early November, when prices hit $3.49. Ethanol prices, which affects 10% of the cost, have just cleared out some 2021 temporary inflation and are sitting at about $2.30 a gallon. Put it all together, and we have the 0-cent margin price in the neighborhood of $2.89, which suggests if there is a price reset, we would land in the $3.09-$3.19 range.
Given the wide range of prices right now, I am predicting that a reset happens soon, so find time today to fill up the tank. -EA
We are way overdue for a full market reset in Chicagoland after several hikse since Thanksgiving that just scooped up the REALLY cheap Speedways that were losing money. Maybe the 4.5c DROP in spot today willl be the trigger, lol. This is definitely a different behavior than I ever recall seeing before the sale of Speedway to 7-11
Indy area hike to $3.259.
$3.159 in Ohio tonight.
Northeast IL 0- Across the board hike to $3.45 ($3.55 in Cook County) showing on Speedway’s app and appearing increasingly on Gasbuddy
Family Express attempting a $3.29 jump in NW Indiana today.