·
The retail price for a gallon of regular gasoline rose another
ten cents last week to $3.60 per gallon, according to the U.S.
Department of Energy survey. Prices have now risen 55 cents (18.0%)
since the end of last year.
· Spot market prices for gasoline may have reached a plateau this week. Yesterday's wholesale price for a gallon of non-oxygenated gasoline was $2.92 per gallon, equal to last week's average.
· At $118.75, yesterday's
price for a barrel of WTI crude oil also was near last week's average of
$119.21/bbl.
· Natural gas prices, however, continued to surge. A jump yesterday in the wholesale price of natural gas to $11.04 per mmbtu followed last week's surge to an average $10.49/mmbtu.
· Weekly gasoline prices can be found in Haver's WEEKLY database, daily prices are found in the DAILY database.
· Oil and the U.S. Macro economy: An Update and a Simple Forecasting Exercise is a working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and it is available here.