Gas Price May Jump In 2017

It could cost more to gas up the car in 2017.
 
After a 17 cents a gallon increase in the past month, the seasonal reduction in driving could keep the price from rising--- at least in the first few weeks of the new year.
 
That’s the prediction from Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, New Jersey.
 
“We’ll probably go through a period maybe between Martin Luther King Day and Groundhog Day where it’s wow look gasoline is pretty cheap again, it’s dropping.  There aren’t many places to go in New Jersey or the Northeast in January and early February and it is our worst month for gasoline demand by far.”
 
Many oil producing countries have agreed to reduce production. Kloza says that should start having an effect in February and could push gas prices higher by 35 to 60 cents a gallon by Memorial Day.
 
Kloza says speculation that this winter will be colder than the last one is also sending the cost of home heating oil higher.
 
“It won’t be one of those apocalyptic winters where people order a hundred gallons of heating oil and they have pay $4 a gallon for it. They may pay $2.50, $2.75, somewhere in that neighborhood. So not as cheap as 2016 but much more expensive than we paid at the lows.”
 
Kloza says the policies the Trump administration will pursue could play a big part in where energy prices go in 2017.
 
“Will Donald Trump start what amounts to a mini trade war? Will he put in a tariff on imported oil? Will he roll back the CAFE standards, corporate average fuel economy standards for automobiles? So, a lot more things that can roil the market in 2017 than during the last eight years.”