PROVIDENCE – Gasoline prices in Rhode Island and Massachusetts rose for the fourth week in a row, AAA Southern New England reported Monday.
The auto club’s Oct. 25 survey found the average price of self-serve, unleaded regular at Ocean State stations was $2.88 per gallon, up 4 cents from last week and 24 cents over the past four weeks.
Gasoline for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 1.07 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $2.0531 a gallon at 12:35 p.m. New York time, Bloomberg News reported. Prices dropped 1.9 percent last week, the second consecutive decline.
French labor unions pledged to extend their protests into an eighth week after the Senate approved Sarkozy’s bill on Friday to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 and the age for a full pension to 67 from 65.
Supplies to the East Coast, the main U.S. destination for European gasoline, dropped 13 percent to 53.5 million barrels from Sept. 17 to Oct. 15, according to the Energy Department in Washington. That’s the lowest level since the week ended Aug. 28, 2009.
France hasn’t notified the Paris-based International Energy Agency of any reduction in oil stockpiles below the minimum requirement of 90 days worth of supply, IEA’s Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said Monday in Moscow, according to Bloomberg News.
“The impact of the French strike on the U.S. gasoline market will be relatively limited” because of ample stockpiles, Michael Lewis, a London-based analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, said in an Oct. 22 note. Inventories of the motor fuel rose 0.5 percent to 219.3 million barrels in the week to Oct. 15, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In its survey, AAA found prices in Rhode Island ranging from $2.75 to $2.95 per gallon for unleaded regular. At $2.88, the average price per gallon in Rhode Island is 7 cents higher than the average price nationwide of $2.81.
A year ago, gas prices in Rhode Island stood at $2.67 per gallon.
Prices also rose again in Massachusetts. The AAA survey found the average price of self-serve, unleaded regular was $2.80 per gallon in the Bay State, up 2 cents from last week and 8 cents below Rhode Island’s average.
At stations in Rhode Island this week, the survey found average self-serve prices of $3.01 per gallon for midgrade unleaded, $3.13 for premium unleaded gasoline, and $3.13 for diesel.
For more information, visit AAA.com.
