Just last Thursday we said that gasoline prices, then at $3.628, could continue to rise until prices got to an average of around $3.80 a gallon. According to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge report, the average price today is $3.748 a gallon.
But the price of Brent crude today has fallen to $116.61. Plug that number into this handy calculator and we are told that a gallon of gasoline should cost $3.75. The calculator actually forecasts a price several weeks in advance, so if Brent prices stick at around their current price, we should see some leveling off of the current uninterrupted spate of price hikes.
Gasoline prices earlier this year dropped considerably below the calculated average for no particularly reason, and the daily price hikes have been making a correction for those low prices. Now that correction seems to have done its work and prices could stabilize around $3.75 to $3.80 a gallon.
It is important to remember that the only crude price that matters for the purposes of picking out a future price for gasoline is the price of Brent crude. The decline in Brent prices from October through early December reversed in January, when prices ended the month at about $3 a barrel more than where they started. As of today, Brent is about another $1 a barrel higher, and the pace of increase is slowing.
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