Las Vegas gasoline prices dip slightly
Las Vegas gasoline prices have reversed course in the last week — they are actually down a couple of pennies.
According to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded fuel fell from $3.98 per gallon a week ago to $3.96 on Monday. The website vegasgasprices.com on Monday noted a Smith’s at Centennial Parkway and Losee Road in North Las Vegas with a $3.69 posted price. Several other locations on the website were noted with prices in the $3.70s.
Still, prices are higher than they were a month ago, AAA reports. Some 30 days ago, the average Las Vegas price was $3.92 a gallon.
Several states report prices higher than Nevada, according to AAA. They include California, Oregon, Washington plus Hawaii and five Midwestern and East Coast states.
Las Vegas prices appear to be on the backside of a nationwide trend.
Regular gasoline at the pump, averaged nationwide, dropped seven straight days to $3.901 a gallon on Thursday , according to AAA, the largest U.S. motoring club. Crude oil futures have declined 6.7 percent from the 2012 peak of $109.77 on Feb. 24 as tensions eased over Iran’s nuclear program, lessening the threat of a loss of its oil. The Energy Department also reduced its gasoline consumption forecast for this year and for 2013 on April 10.
“More and more people are believing that gasoline has peaked,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest in Chicago. “We know refiners are going to be coming off spring maintenance and will be coming on strong the next few weeks, and we will have plenty of gasoline.”
Pump prices have climbed 19 percent in 2012, with the high so far $3.936 on April 4, according to AAA. Demand has fallen with the higher costs. Americans purchased 5.3 percent less gasoline so far this year than in 2011, data from credit-card receipts analyzed by MasterCard Inc.’s SpendingPulse report showed April 10.
Gasoline will peak in May at $4.01 a gallon, the Energy Department said April 10 in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. Prices reached the highest level of 2011 at $3.985 on May 4, weeks before the Memorial Day holiday kicked off the traditional start of the summer driving season.
The record retail price was $4.114 on July 15, 2008. In Las Vegas, the record stands at $4.27 reached about a month earlier, June 20, 2008.
Oil is currently taking only half as big a bite out of Americans’ pocketbooks as in 1981, the last time shipments from Iran were disrupted. The cost of a barrel of crude in the United States was $107.92 in January compared with a peak of $213.44 in the same month in 1981, adjusted for total disposable income, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Energy and Commerce departments.
The Energy Department reported April 11 that gasoline inventories fell 4.28 million barrels to the lowest level since December in the week ended April 6 as refiners cut production rates 1.9 percentage points to 83.8 percent of capacity and demand contracted 1.2 percent from the prior week. A day earlier, the department said consumption will fall 1 percent this year to 8.65 million barrels a day and an additional 20,000 barrels a day to 8.63 million in 2013.
The U.S. exported more gasoline, diesel and other fuels than it imported in 2011 for the first time since 1949, the department reported Feb. 29. Shipments abroad exceeded imports by 439,000 barrels a day last year as U.S. demand shrank. That compared with net imports of 269,000 barrels in 2010.
Along the East Coast, Sunoco Inc. and ConocoPhillips idled money-losing refineries in Pennsylvania with a combined capacity of 363,000 barrels a day last year, or 24 percent of the region’s output. Sunoco has said it will shut its 335,000-barrel-a-day Philadelphia plant by July unless it finds a buyer.
Money managers, including commodity pools and commodity-trading advisers, reduced positions in gasoline by 6,706 to 87,433 contracts in the seven days ended April 10. This was the lowest level since March 20.
“It wouldn’t be a bad time to take profit,” said Amrita Sen, a London-based analyst at Barclays. “Demand hasn’t been very good. Short term, there may not be much going for gasoline.”
Review-Journal staff contributed to this report.
Check online for gas prices around Las Vegas.
