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Oil expert: stable gas prices ahead

WOKV MONEY WATCH

The average price for a gallon of gas in Jacksonville on Tuesday is $3.44, up just a tenth of a cent since the same time last week.

WOKV’s oil expert Gregg Laskoski, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, believes prices will stay very flat or even decline slightly during the next two weeks.  He says one of the biggest contributors to the recent stability in prices is because of last week’s report from the Department of Energy that inventories are up.

“We saw crude oil and gasoline inventory increase by remarkable amounts,” Laskoski says.

Gasoline increased by 7.4 million barrels, which pushed up the inventory by more than 9 million barrels, according to Laskoski.

“We’re about four percent greater than we were a year ago,” he says.  “It’s actually at a level that we haven’t seen this high since February of 2011.  So with that healthy inventory, that’s the reason why prices are flat or even declining in some markets.”

But Laskoski predicts the trend should turn around about a month from now.

“I think we’re going to see that annual climb that we see every spring probably by mid to late February,” he says.

By that time, he says gasoline refineries will begin making the switch to summer blend gasoline, which is more expensive to make than the current winter blend.

CLICK HERE to see where the lowest gas prices are in Jacksonville.

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