From the news reports, it looks like there is too much oil in the world, at least above ground, and no place to store it. Before I offered my bathtub for storage, I checked gasbuddy.com for automobile gas (petrol for you Brits), and a station near me had regular at $1.08/gal last Tuesday, 2 days ago.
Today (Thursday) I drove by the station at 8AM and the sign said $1.19. Same price at another station of the same chain. I picked up some groceries, and went to the first station to fill up. The price was now $1.35. The attendant said it wouldn’t be going up for at least a few hours.
I just checked gasbuddy, and the same station now (at 6PM) shows $1.45.
So what’s going on? Is there a storage shortage or not? I know of no news in the last 48 hours that would affect prices this much this soon.
You may live in a location which does a lot of price cycling. The coronavirus drop put a damper on that for 2 months, but it looks like the local stations are doing their thing again today-Gasbuddy shows Milwaukee as going up 22 cents, but the local average there had gotten all the way down to 1.17.
It may happen here [NE FL] too next week, the price drop curve has flattened out this week. The local refineries may also be going thru spring maintenance, which can often mean a price jack.
I just checked my gas receipts and the last gas I bought was in late March, from the same station as the OP, for $1.89/gal (let’s ignore the 9/10 cents, shall we?).
By today, I couldn’t benefit much by the price reduction, as I haven’t been driving much – haven’t left the house for the last 10 days, and only twice in the last 20. So the cheap gas price is bittersweet – if I don’t need gas, having it available cheaply isn’t much to crow about.