Summer driving season may mean sticker shock for motorists this weekend with $3-a-gallon gas expected at the pumps, according to analysts in the Colorado gasoline industry.
Colorado’s average price Thursday for self-service regular unleaded was $2.94 a gallon, up from $2.79 a month ago. Prices reached a record average in Colorado at $3.07 last September.
“We’ll probably hit the $3 mark by the weekend,” said Roy Turner, executive vice president of the Colorado/Wyoming Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.
The rapid rise in consumer prices is being driven by the price of crude oil, pushed up by a recent crude-oil spill in Louisiana that put at least one refinery temporarily out of commission, plus speculation about instability in North Korea and Iran.
Drivers haven’t yet seen the effect of recent price increases that have brought wholesale gasoline to more than $2.90 a gallon, said Bryant Gimlin, energy risk manager at Gray Oil Co. in Fort Lupton.
“It’s gone up faster at the wholesale level,” Gimlin said. “It will probably go over $3 (retail) but not stay over for too long.”
High pump prices have already caused Jerry Foster, 23, to leave his Honda Civic at home in favor of riding a Regional Transportation District bus to work.
Foster said he was spending $100 a week on gas to drive from his home in Ken-Caryl to Stanz beauty salon in Aurora, where he works, even in the relatively fuel-efficient Civic. He now pays $54 a month for a bus pass, a savings of about $350 a month.
“It’s out of control now,” Foster said of gasoline prices, as he waited for a bus at the RTD light-rail and bus stop near South Broadway and Interstate 25. “I kept the little Honda Civic; I just don’t drive it.”
Summer driving season usually creates peak demand and peak prices, said Mike Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Massachusetts.
Prices would drop during the current high-demand period if 10 percent of U.S. families took their summer vacations locally, rather than driving 1,500 miles. The reduced demand would force prices down, he said.
“It makes an effect on the market. When the market is really tight, a 1 percent drop in demand would cause inventories to start growing rapidly,” Lynch said.
But people such as Foster aside, weekly reports from the Department of Energy show little change in demand for gasoline, suggesting that Americans haven’t changed their driving habits.
Although prices often spike around Labor Day weekend, Lynch said summer driving will soon start to diminish and gasoline supplies will build, causing prices to drop 5 cents a week or more through Labor Day.
Motorists in some mountain communities already pay much more than $3 a gallon. An Aspen Conoco was selling regular unleaded for $3.79 Thursday.
In Denver, Carol Aronowitz, a 53-year-old property manager who commutes from her home in Genesee to work downtown, grits her teeth and pays whatever it takes to fill her tank.
“We drive as much as ever,” Aronowitz said at a Conoco station at West 6th Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. “It’s terrible.”
Staff writer Beth Potter can be reached at 303-820-1503 or bpotter@denverpost.com.
