Jacksonville FL — It’s a good time to hit the road this weekend, according to Gas Buddy we should see the lowest Labor Day gas prices since 2004. Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy, says prices jumped in Jacksonville right before the weekend, but they should be slowly trickling down over the next couple of days.
“What we saw was a ‘price cycle’ in which stations kinda uniformly all went up to $2.19 a gallon.” De Haan says.
Even with the recent jump, De Haan says we’re still paying about $.22 less than this time a year ago. If you’re traveling out of state, he suggests filling up in states like Georgia, Alabama or South Carolina since they typically have cheaper gas prices than Florida due to lower gas taxes.
“The reasons being gasoline demand tends to go down in the cooler months and we also switch back to cheaper Winter gasoline in mid-September.” De Haan says.
Once we get through Labor Day, De Haan says prices will start to trend lower and we should see prices in the Fall and Winter spend a lot of time under $2.00.
By Halloween we can expect to see more prices to be under $2.00 a gallon and by Thanksgiving we could see some stations drop down to $1.50 a gallon. He says coronavirus is still the biggest factor in potentially impacting prices over the coming months.
“If there is a vaccine, if there is some way that we can quickly return back close to normal, that would likely boost gasoline demand and cause prices not to drop but maybe inch up a bit.” De Haan says.
He says the most likely outcome over the coming months is for lower gas prices.