Comment on the April 6 prediction: Basically CORRECT, as prices fell all last week, as low as $2.75 in Greenville. Some stubborn stations remain above $3.19, though.

Sunday, April 13, 2025, 3 PM: Last week, oil dropped below $60 a barrel before recovering a bit at the end of the week. Wholesale gas prices have been following, albeit slowly. Our tell is Costco, as their price is a reasonable estimate of the 0-cent margin price. For the Costco that I follow in Grand Rapids, a gallon of gas went from $3.24 on April 3 to $2.88 this afternoon. Unless something newly bizarre happens with this “trade war”, prices should continue to drop across the board, towards $2.69 a gallon. If nothing else, look for stations under $3 a gallon. -EA

Sunday, April 6, 2025, 12 Noon: I am back from a trip to Southern California, home of $4+ gasoline. And things have been kind of crazy in Midwestern Gas Game land.

First, we had a Sunday hike a week ago, to $3.39. What happened there? Wholesale prices jumped a bit at the end of March, as the “summer gas” mix continues to kick in. It appeared to me that generally this hike occurred across west Michigan, and for whatever reason, our retailer friends didn’t want to wait until Monday. That happens every few years.

Then, late Wednesday, President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, and if The Gas Game was a board game, it was like someone knocked the board off of the table in frustration. You probably heard on the news about stocks selling off hard, but a related story was that oil prices did the same. Wednesday’s quote was $71.71 a barrel. At the close Friday, 13% lower to $62.72, which is the lowest it has been since April 2021. Back then, prices were in the $2.80’s and $2.90’s, and that’s where we are going again. (Prediction!)

But how do we get there? Driving around the Grand Rapids area on Sunday morning, I spotted $3.39 and $3.25 on Plainfield Avenue and $3.09 off of I-96 in Walker. Gas Buddy spotters have noticed some prices below $3 today. Look around for bargains like that. -EA

Comment on the March 15 prediction: It is as if they read the prediction and said, “WRONG, Ed”. An hour after I posted it, I was driving through Lowell and saw that Big M had posted a new price of $3.29. That was surprising, to say the least, but given past failures of Big M to start a region-wide hike, I didn’t worry about it. The rest of the region raised prices to $3.29 on Tuesday the 18th.

Sunday, March 23, 2025, 2 PM: So, what happened last week? Switching over to the “summer gas” blend added about 12 cents per gallon to the wholesale price last Monday, and the retailers passed that along to drivers. You could tell this was legit because Costco also raised their price, although it took a few days. If there is good news, there are prices of $3.07 – $3.09 scattered about, either because those stations didn’t follow the leaders last Tuesday or we have some good ol’ Gas Game competition going on.

What’s next? There are no obvious signs in the wholesale market of a further hike. I will be keeping an eye on whether the gasoline markets start moving in anticipation of the tariff “Liberation Day” of April 2. -EA

Saturday, March 15, 2025, 7 AM: In our last post, we saw Marathon attempt a hike to $3.15. Once again, most competitors were not interested in following. Some $3.09’s popped up a few days later, but it wasn’t until Thursday the 13th that a region-wide reset to that price occurred.

Those widespread resets have been few and far between for months, and I continue to think about why that has been the case. Just looking at the numbers, wholesale prices have been incredibly stable since mid-October, including oil prices vibrating around $70 a barrel. The seasonal pattern in gasoline prices — a tendency to go lower from Labor Day to Christmas and then rise the first half of the yea — has been there, but mild.

Then I ponder the political environment. As we discussed in February, Speedway and friends were a lot more aggressive with their retail pricing last year, when Biden was president. Was that a coincidence? Just asking questions.

Oil prices have been falling since January 15 and that should keep gas prices tame for the rest of the month. I predict no new hikes or resets for the upcoming week. -EA

Monday, March 3, 2025, 5 PM: I usually post on Sundays, but I waited until now to see if there was any news about tariffs. Trump announced a few hours ago that 25% tariffs go into effect at midnight.

Meanwhile, driving home, I see that Marathon in Standale is trying again to reset prices, this time to $3.15. Will they finally see a hike embraced broadly, specifically by Speedway? Let’s see …

Why Marathon should win: While wholesale prices dipped a week ago, they are starting to move up again, and many stations have prices posted that are under their cost today. The new tariff on Canada will probably raise wholesale prices. And a hike to $3.15 is mild enough in many places that it may persuade other retailers to follow.

Why Marathon should lose: Probably due to the imminent tariffs, oil prices just hit their low for 2025. As reported last week, Speedway has lost interest in aggressive pricing since Trump was elected.

Here is my plan: Fill up by tomorrow morning, when you find gas under $3. While there is a small chance we’ll see prices drop to $2.49, it is more likely that they’ll reset prices now and see what happens next. -EA

Friday, February 21, 2025, 10 AM: I have been posting less often, because wholesale prices have been stable since, well, late August of last year. It is weird, but it has also kept prices closer to $3 than $4 in the Midwest. This week, it appears there was a mild price reset to $3.09 in west Michigan, although Marathon tried … again … to hike to $3.19.

In 2025 so far, it seems the retailers are accepting lower margins (profit per gallon sold) than they were during 2024. As readers know, the aggressiveness of 2024 has been on my mind for a while, so this morning I dove into my spreadsheets to look back as far as 2020 and study my calculations to estimate margin.

In the figure, I’ve divided the last five years into three periods. For 2020-21, the first year of the pandemic, we had classic Gas Game behavior, with margins topping out at about 30 cents per gallon after each price hike. In 2022 through about a year ago, margins varied wildly, driven in part by the Ukraine war (which started where I have drawn the yellow arrow) and high inflation. (It is still a question of how much of that inflation was caused by higher oil and gas prices.) Then, starting a year ago, hikes started occurring at the 30-cent mark, rather than hikes landing at that mark.

The red arrow marks Election Day, and it appears to me that aggressive pricing subsided after the election. Or, there is some sort of winter break right now, and pricing behavior is going to start being driver-unfriendly again next month, which is what happened a year ago.

Short-term, once again, I have no prediction to make. If the 2024 switch is turned back on, we could easily see $3.39. If not, prices will drop below $3 again. We’ll see. -EA