Will Gas Prices Ever Decrease?
By: Cristina Fernandez
As teenager, many of us own cars or have friends that own cars. Many of us also love to have fun and travel to different places such as the beach, amusement parks, the movies, and even to a friend’s house just to hang out. The list goes on and on. Along with this, many of us also need to pay for our own gas. This can become a great dilemma if you don’t have a job or another form of steady income. When you go to the pump, you fill up your gas and when you go to pay, your heart skips a little beat. What other options do we have besides pay high costs for gas? Stay home, become couch potatoes and not live up our teenage lives? No, of course we want to have fun! We can’t control our human instincts to explore the world so unfortunately we have to suck it up and deal with these ridiculous gas prices.
Gas prices have an effect on many other consumer items. The price of shipping goods has increased since companies need to pay the price for gas that the shipping truck consumes. For example, in January when fuel prices rose, the cost of food did as well. The cost of ground beef increased about three cents. The question many of us teens often ask is...are gas prices predicted to drop, and if so when? The answer is yes. Prices are expected to drop. Oil prices have decreased therefore gas prices will continue to decrease. This jump in price just hasn’t hit the pumps quite yet. As of June 21, 2011 the national gasoline average according to the AAA stood at $3.64 for Regular, $3.78 for Mid-grade, and $3.91 for Premium. The area of the country that have been hit the most by fluctuating prices is the Midwestern states. These states have seen the sharpest drops yet, and the sharpest rises due to certain events such as refinery closings, outages from tornadoes, delayed shipments due to flooding, and the switch from winter-blend to summer-blend fuel. The beginning of May was a tough month for many states around the country. Certain states such as Illinois hit an all-time high on May 5th when gas prices were just below $4.32 but then shortly after dropped down to $4.27. Michigan has also seen dramatic changes; it hit its all-time high on May 4th at $4.26 and then fell twelve cents leaving it just below $4.14. Ohio’s prices dropped fourteen cents after its peak on May 4th, and Wisconsin dropped eight cents after its peak on May 5th. “Earlier this year there was a big concern of limited gasoline supplies but those concerns no longer exist,” explains Avery Ash, AAA’s Washington-based manager of regulatory affairs. Now that refineries are coming back online and the switchover to summer-blend fuels is over, from here on out there should be a steady decrease in gas prices without fluctuation. Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel and us teens can make more trips to the beach without being concerned about high gas prices!
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Image Credit: barringtonlewis.com
