Another significant jump at the pump predicted
Posted Jul 18, 2013 06:38:12 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
For the second week in a row, we can expect gas prices to be go up fairly significantly in Nova Scotia.
What happens in New Brunswick is a pretty good gauge of what will happen here and when prices were adjusted at midnight, a litre of fuel went up 5.2 cents.
Gas price watcher George Murphy doesn’t think it will be quite that bad here. He’s predicting a jump of about 4.6 cents a litre.
“This all going back to inventory levels that were recorded last Wednesday,” he said. “Last week we had a ten-million barrel draw down on inventory and we had ‘X’ number of millions of gas inventory that was drawn on.”
If he’s right, that means a litre of regular would cost 1.40.5, but he said we could see some relief in the near future.
Murphy explained consumers have had enough and there’s been a clear drop in demand in the range of six per cent.
“If there’s going to be a peak happening here, I think this is it,” he predicted. “Right now consumers are telling investors, ‘Sorry boys, you hit a wall and I’m not buying.’ ”
“Your next week or so, after this price adjustment that is, you should start to see either a tapering off of the price or a small or modest retreat,” he said.
As mentioned, inventory could also play a role in where gas prices are headed in the coming weeks.
“Crude oil inventories were down yesterday by a little over six-million barrels, and there was an increase in gasoline inventory by about 3.1, 3.2 million barrels,” said Murphy.
The price for a barrel of crude oil is holding fairly steady today, and was slightly down if anything during early trading.
