AAA Reports NEO Gas Prices Drop 16 Cents Over Week
PITTSBURGH – Gas prices in northeastern Ohio are down 16 cents this week, dropping this week to $3.743 per gallon, the East Central office of the American Automobile Association reports.
Mahoning Valley stations are reporting slightly lower prices. With Speedway gas stations in Niles and Warren reporting regular unleaded at $3.70 per gallon. Regular unleaded is listed at $3.66 at the Austintown Speedway on Kirk Road and at $3.52 on North Meridian Road in Youngstown.
The national average price for regular unleaded gasoline is $3.61 per gallon, 2 cents less expensive than a week ago and 4 cents less than a month ago but 10 cents more than the same date last year.
The average price of regular unleaded during the week of June 11 was $3.907, and the average during the week of June 19, 2013 was $3.632.
Last week’s national average moved higher because of sharp increases in retail prices for a handful of Great Lakes states, AAA East Central reported. The near record high prices in these states were because of continued low supplies and transportation challenges for wholesale gasoline in the Chicago market, particularly due to maintenance at the ExxonMobil refinery in Joliet, Ill. and the BP refinery in Whiting, Ind. Those same states have seen prices reverse course over the last week.
National gasoline markets in recent months have been driven by regional supply and production issues rather than by the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, which has traded in a narrow $5 range. At the same time regional gasoline production and distribution concerns have eased and retail prices have inched lower, market-watchers have turned a wary eye to escalating geopolitical tensions in Syria. While Syria is not a major oil producing nation, the risk that fighting might spread to other countries in the region has kept some upward pressure on crude oil prices.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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