While now-Tropical Storm Debby hasn’t seemed to pose any issues to refiners or pipelines, a recently released poor jobs report sent oil prices tumbling.
Two local crude oil purchasers, American Refining Group and Ergon, as of Friday had dropped prices below $70 per barrel at $69.52. Local average gas prices finally dipped a bit, down 4 cents to $3.859.
Regional prices are 3 cents lower this week at $3.713 per gallon throughout Western Pennsylvania, according to AAA East Central. It was $3.466 in Brookville, $3.676 in DuBois, $3.640 in Erie and $3.843 in Warren.
“With oil prices plummeting due to new concerns over the U.S. economy after a poor jobs report, gasoline prices have seen downside in many states, with potential for more to join that trend this week as previous refinery disruptions in the Great Lakes region fade away and the restart process begins,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
Overall in the Keystone State, prices dropped by a nickel during the last week, averaging $3.56 Monday. That average cost is 10.1 cents less than last month and 34.6 cents less than last year.
Nationally, diesel prices decreased by 2.3 cents and stand at $3.76 per gallon. For gas, prices fell 3.5 cents to an average of $3.44 Monday. The national average is 5.6 cents lower than a month ago and 37.2 cents per gallon lower than a year ago.
“Diesel prices have also continued to drop, and while Tropical Storm Debby drops buckets of rain on Florida and the Southeast, it poses low risk to refineries or refined product pipelines, so the storm is not a major concern,” De Haan said. “With the Middle East on alert after Israel’s attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah, there could be an impact on oil prices; however, with an inability to predict the outcome, I for now expect gasoline prices in most states to gently decline in the week ahead, with the Middle East situation being a wildcard.”
Pennsylvania fuel stops varied by $1.30 per gallon Monday, with the cheapest charging $3.09 and the priciest collecting $4.39.
According to new data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), gas demand slid from 9.45 million barrels per day to 9.25 last week. Meanwhile, total domestic gasoline stocks fell from 227.4 to 223.8 million barrels. Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 10.0 million barrels per day.
At the close of Wednesday’s formal trading session, West Texas Intermediate rose by $3.18 cents to settle at $77.91 a barrel. The EIA reports that crude oil inventories decreased by 3.4 million barrels from the previous week. At 433.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 4% below the five-year average for this time of year.
