Prices up slightly at gas pumps

Fuel prices are rising slightly on the eve of summer’s last holiday weekend, but they are expected to stay well below the record-breaking highs seen three months ago.

Still, it will cost more this Labor Day weekend to fill up the gas tank than it did a year ago, according to AAA.

“The prices aren’t so jarring this time because they’re not going up so fast, but they’re still higher than last year,” said Janet Ray, a spokeswoman at AAA’s regional office in Bellevue.

As of Wednesday, the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett average self-serve price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $2.01, the organization’s daily survey reported. That was up about 5 cents from two weeks ago.

In Everett, Marysville and Lake Stevens, prices posted Wednesday ranged from $1.92 at Arco stations to $2.05 a gallon at a few Texaco outlets.

At this time last year, a gallon of unleaded averaged just under $1.98 in the Puget Sound area, which was nearly 50 cents higher than the previous year.

The 2003 Labor Day weekend average was a record, when not adjusted for inflation. Prices at the pump topped out at just below $2 last September.

Those records were shattered during this year’s Memorial Day weekend. On May 29, the regional average peaked at $2.35 a gallon before slowly easing downward over the summer.

Tim Hamilton, executive director of the Automotive United Trades Organization, said he isn’t optimistic about a big decline in prices this fall and winter.

Crude oil prices fell in recent weeks but are still above $43 a barrel. As long as that’s the case, and oil companies keep taking large margins at the refining level, prices won’t settle much lower, said Hamilton, who represents independent gas stations across the state.

The federal Energy Information Administration agrees that prices will stay relatively high. While demand for gasoline has slowed since prices shot up earlier this year, demand is expected to rebound.

“As consumers adjust to higher prices, more or less normal rates of growth (about 2 percent) should reappear and keep pressure on the U.S. gasoline market for at least another year,” the agency predicted in its latest forecast.

At Everett’s Nelson Petroleum, which supplies gas to local stations and trucking companies, Mark Nelson said the wholesale price of fuel is down somewhat after spiking in late August.

“We’ve seen a stabilization,” he said. “What they’re going to do next, though, I don’t think anybody knows.”

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.

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