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  • For American Consumers, Fuel Prices Add Insult To Injury

  • For Labor Day weekend, American consumers in 45 states
    will likely see the highest fuel prices they’ve ever seen at this time of
    year. Only motorists in Alaska, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming
    will be spared from record-high prices at the
    pump

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    Updated Aug. 30, 2012 @ 4:04 pm
  • "The average motorist will be laboring a bit more to pay for gas this Labor Day weekend. When you return to work after the Labor Day holiday it might be a good time to ask your boss for a raise," says Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst, GasBuddy.com. "Although the end of summer driving season usually sends retail gas prices downward, they’ve got a long way to go before prices fall back to ‘tolerable’. While Tropical Storm Isaac begins to weaken, there's
    still enough upset motorists to think this was a category five storm."
    "The national average is at $3.80 per gallon, 18-cents more than where we were a
    year ago, and 8 states have an average price today at $4/gal or higher. Gas
    in New York City is averaging $4.06/gal; Los Angeles is at $4.15/gal, and
    those are relative bargains compared to the $4.35/gal we’re paying now in
    Chicago!" DeHaan added.
    There’s no question that Hurricane Isaac’s timing
    and impact made a bad situation worse; forcing Gulf Coast refineries and
    others in its path to partial or full closures. But if there’s a silver
    lining, it’s that the record highs at the pump are likely to move lower
    through the weekend.
    "Contrary to popular belief that prices always rise
    during major holiday weekends, analysis of Labor Day weekend prices from
    2001 through 2011 shows that the national average price of gas actually
    declined in 10 of the last 11 years," said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum
    analyst for GasBuddy.com. "In three of those years the decline was nominal;
    by 0.5 cents per gallon or less. In 2006 we saw the greatest decrease from
    the Friday through Monday (-3.3 cents per gallon). 2002 was the only year
    when Labor Day Weekend prices increased (+2.6 cents per gallon)."
    GasBuddy
    operates GasBuddy.com and over 250 similar websites that track gasoline
    prices at
    over 140,000 gasoline stations in the United States and Canada. In
    addition, GasBuddy offers a free smartphone app which has been downloaded
    over 20 million times to help motorists find gasoline prices in their
    area.
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