Higher Costs, Consumption Keep Gas Prices Up

Average consumer gasoline prices rose by 1 cent to more than $1.02 per gallon in the past two weeks due to higher wholesale prices and summer driving and could continue to rise, an oil industry analyst said Sunday.

“The rise is a continued response to higher crude oil prices and summer driving,” said Trilby Lundberg, president of the Lundberg Survey, a national oil-industry newsletter based in Los Angeles.

“However, the move has not allowed for any margin improvements for retailers and refiners.”

Lundberg said refiners, distributors and dealers have an extremely narrow profit margin and “are still trying to pass through their prior buying price increases, which could force a continued rise” in the price of gasoline.

As of Friday, the national average price for all grades of self- and full-service pumps was 102.65 cents a gallon, Lundberg said, a .99 cent rise above the July 24 average price of 101.66.

The new price is 15.8 cents a gallon higher than it was in August, 1986, but it still is 20.4 cents a gallon lower than August, 1985, Lundberg said.

Self-service regular unleaded, the top-selling fuel grade with 79% of sales, now goes for 95.08 cents a gallon.

Regular leaded, whose share of the market has been shrinking, has the lowest average price, 91.49 cents at self-service pumps.

Premium unleaded, an increasingly popular seller due to older cars, which require more octane than regular unleaded provides, jumped the most in the past two weeks to 108.37.

The price rise at full-service pumps was more modest, Lundberg said. Regular unleaded averaged 120.72, regular leaded 116.93 and premium unleaded 130.37.

The average gasoline price per gallon first hit $1 in the fall of 1979 during the Iranian oil embargo. It dropped to an average of 84 cents last November and again topped $1 in early July.

Lundberg surveys 13,000 stations nationwide, and monitors wholesale prices every day. She includes all taxes and gasoline grades in her twice-monthly report, which her father, Dan Lundberg, started publishing 37 years ago.