Prices to drop Thursday

Media release

Conception Bay South, NL, April 24, 2012- Consumers in Newfoundland and Labrador will see a large retreat in gasoline prices when the Public Utilities Board adjusts prices for this Thursday. That’s according to George Murphy, group researcher for the Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices.

“Numbers are all down, but distillate fuels are still not showing concerted drops like I had hoped. Heating and stove oils are only forecast to drop by 87/100ths of a cent, while diesel fuel shows a modest drop of 1.8 cents a litre. The big news for consumers comes with gasoline, with that number showing a drop of 7.1 cents a litre. Keep in mind that there’s possibly a lot of volatility in the numbers,” Murphy said.

“From all appearances, gasoline is dropping because of, not only a glut of oil in the markets, but also the fact that gasoline inventories haven’t seen a large impact, even though refining capacity in the US northeast has been severely curtailed. Even though inventories were impacted by the lack of product supplied, we’re still at a point where there’s a large inventory of gasoline over the same timeframe last year. Consumers can take some heart in the fact that some of these refineries should be coming back online shortly. They still can’t be complacent over this drop in prices however, and should still show their anger by conserving as much as possible and help keep building inventories. Prices should retreat further if consumers collectively send the inventory message as a result.”

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For more information, contact;

George Murphy

Group researcher/Member

Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices

Twitter: @GeorgeMurphyNDP