CAMARILLO, Calif. -- Retail gasoline prices shed 4.51 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, and the volume-weighted self-serve regular average is now $2.8879, according to the latest Lundberg Survey of approximately 7,000 U.S. gas stations.
That $2.89 includes the a range of 65 cents from Honolulu's $3.26 and Charleston S.C.'s $2.61. In California, the biggest consumer, the self-serve regular average is more than $3.12, and down over a dime in two weeks.
The U.S. average [image-nocss] retail margin on self-serve regular shrank painfully over the two weeks, and year to date is inferior to that of last year.
The range of retail margins around the country is dramatic: on June 23, less than 6 cents on regular in the Midwest, a dime in East and West, eight pennies in the Gulf, and a razor-thin 4 cents in the Rockies.
Gasoline demand seems to be hanging on, not shrinking but not growing of late, beckoning retailers to chase sales aggressively.
The June 23 price is down a paltry 6 cents over the past seven weeks since this year's price peak, leaving the price because high crude and ethanol prices will not give. Crude remains over $70 a barrel as it was seven weeks ago, while ethanol prices are zooming. As crude oil prices can't be expected to crash with unknowns about Iran frightening the market, neither can spiking ethanol be expected to ease much anytime soon.
This year's instant new ethanol purchases by refiners mandated by federal law are made without much access to foreign ethanol thanks to the high U.S. import tariff, the lifting of which would certainly inspire further world investments in ethanol production. Last year's U.S. ethanol sales mandate alone has caused the World Bank to be "flooded" with requests for funding new ethanol projects.
Although the American economy is strong and gasoline demand should be growing nicely, its growth is denied by foreign oil producer politics and domestic ethanol protectionism. So with neither crude nor ethanol prices likely to cave anytime soon, gasoline price changes up or down will probably be slight.
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