Price drops on the way
Markets show another downturn

Media release

Conception Bay South, NL, February 24, 2009- The markets have been showing another sell-off as the economy slowly sinks and that will show another break to consumers later this week as all fuel prices will drop on Thursday morning, that’s the prediction coming this week from the Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices.

What the numbers say
“All the data is in and it looks like we’re in for a break on petroleum products come this Thursday morning. Fourteen days of data show that diesel will drop by 5.0 cents per litre, gasoline to drop by 2.8 cents a litre and stove oils to drop by 3.99 cents per litre,” said George Murphy, group researcher with the group.

“The stove oil number points to what is on the way for heating oil and with that fuels jet fuel component showing a drop of up to 15 per cent in demand, I expect heating oil to take a sharper drop than the one predicted for stove oils. Heating oils should be closer to a nickel down as a result.

Outlook on diesel prices
Some clues are beginning to emerge from the markets in recent days on what could be happening with diesel prices in the long term and it should prove to be good news for a lot of users of the fuel. The last few days have shown some moves by the European Union against manufacturers of bio-diesel. Because the product is manufactured with huge subsidies by the US government, the EU is talking about placing tariffs on the product to keep it away from EU products. The EU views it as a subsidized product and that gives it an unfair advantage. If that happens, US inventories of distillate will only increase and that means dropping prices.

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For more information, contact;

George Murphy
Group researcher/Member
Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices