Thursday, May 5, 2011

Relief at the Pump?

Maybe the one financial number people are watching most closely these days isn't the Dow Jones average or the return on Treasury bills or the unemployment rate: It's the cost of a gallon of gasoline. Here in New Jersey, the average price of a gallon of gas sits at $3.82, up 8 cents in the past week. It's up over a dollar from a year ago, when it was $2.75. Still, we're below the national average of $3.91 a gallon.

But we may be headed for some relief. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, futures contracts for gasoline delivery scheduled in November have come in more than 4 percent lower than those for June contracts. So some smart investors think gas will cost less at the wholesale level come this fall.

In addition, the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration has forecast that the price of a gallon of gas will drop to an average of $3.85 nationally in the third quarter, and $3.73 in the fourth quarter. That's not a big drop from the current national average, but if it's true, it's certainly better than continuing increases.

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