AAA: Gas Prices Held Steady Over the Summer

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Summer is winding down already, and both retail gasoline and electric vehicle (EV)-charging prices have remained relatively stable, though don't discount the impact of the Atlantic hurricane season, travel club AAA warned.

Hurricane Ernesto is dumping heavy rain on the Bahamas, with the island under emergency alerts due to a storm with sustained winds of around 100 miles per hour. This storm, however, posed no threat to the U.S. mainland.

Hurricanes moving through the refinery rich Gulf Coast, however, can have long-lasting impacts on consumer prices, but this year has been relatively calm despite forecasts of a busy storm season.

"Summer is wrapping up soon, and so far, gas prices have barely wobbled," said Andrew Gross, a spokesperson for AAA.

The travel club put the national average retail price at $3.43 for a gallon of regular unleaded, down about two cents from this time last week and 44 cents lower than this time last year.

Federal data show gasoline production actually declined during the seven-day period ending August 9, which could support higher prices. But it's largely crude oil prices that determine what consumers see at the pump.

The price for Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, was trading around $79 per barrel on Friday, after trading as high as $87 per barrel in July. Concerns about a slowdown in the U.S. and Chinese economies, two of the world's largest, are overshadowing any geopolitical risk premium coming from the Middle East.

Data on inflation in the U.S. economy, meanwhile, show the index covering all blends of gasoline is down 2.2% over the 12-month period to July.

"But we still have a long way to go with hurricane season, so it's too soon to declare that pump prices have started their usual Autumn swoon," AAA's Gross said.

In the United States, Hurricane Beryl was the first named storm of the year, forming deep in the Atlantic in June before bringing heavy rains and flooding to the U.S. Gulf Coast. At least 2 million people in the Houston metropolitan area were left without power for days in the aftermath of the storm, though the oil and gas sector were largely spared.

Storm researchers at Colorado State University said they still expected an "extremely active" hurricane season for 2024, but reduced the number of named storms from 25 to 23.

Elsewhere, AAA has started tracking prices related to the charging of electric vehicles (EVs). More than a million U.S. households have a charging station and AAA put the cost per kilowatt-hour at 34 cents, unchanged over the last two weeks.

That comes amid a report from the Reuters news service showing Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE:TM) (Toyota City, Japan) may be opting for hybrid lines over EVs. In January, the company said it believed that EVs would max out at 30% of the total market share.

"Going forward, we plan to evaluate, carline by carline, whether going all-hybrid makes sense," David Christ, the head of sales and marketing for Toyota in North America, told Reuters.

Electric vehicles accounted for 18% of total sales last year, up from 14% the prior year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimated. Sticker shock and range anxiety may be headwinds for higher sales volumes.

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