A real shocker at the gas pumps locally today as the price per gallon jumped 30 cents to 3.79 on average across the Akron area. Ed Weglarz of the Associated Food And Petroleum Retailers of Michigan and Ohio tells AkronNewsNow there's no justification for the price spike. " The only thing I can think of is greed, because we've noticed the same thing in Michigan. We went to 3.89. The cost of crude is down around $83 a barrel, and yet the wholesale price keeps going up."
Weglarz says there is a gasoline and oil glut right now in the United States. " There is a glut. Demand is eroding downward. The price of crude is going down and yet the wholesale price to the retailers continues to climb," says Weglarz.
He says refiners have so much gasoline they are actually exporting diesel fuel and gasoline to South America and to Mexico.
Weglarz says he's gotten no plausible explanation as to why the gasoline refiners are keeping the prices so high.
"The fundamentals of supply and demand in marketing gasoline just seem to be negated here in the last ten days or so."
