The good news for consumers about gas prices continues

– by a New Deal Democrat

There will be a lot of economic news from tomorrow, but for today let’s stop and look at the energy situation.

Here’s a look at oil prices over the past year through yesterday from CNBC:

And here’s a look at the same time period from Gas Buddy:

Here’s a close look at gas prices for the past month:

Gas prices follow oil prices usually with a lag of several weeks. Oil prices peaked in early June and gas prices in the middle of the month. Oil prices appeared to begin to stabilize in early August, and the decline in gas prices slowed a few weeks later.

Finally, here’s a comparison of oil prices and gas prices (through last Wednesday, weekly average. Since there are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, I divided oil prices by 42 to show the retail markup:

With oil apparently stabilizing in the $90/barrel range, I expect gas prices to stabilize where they are now in the $3.70-$3.90/gallon range across the country. This is only a short-term forecast for gas and a current forecast for oil; I’m not making predictions about where oil prices will go from here.