After inching up over the summer, gas prices expected to ebb into the fall

It’s costing more now to gas up your car than it did at the beginning of summer, but an analyst in New Jersey expects prices will soon be moving lower.

The average price of a gallon of regular in New Jersey is now $3.49. That’s seven cents more than it was on Memorial Day. In Delaware, the average cost was $3.57 a gallon, while motorists in Pennsylvania were paying about $3.62.

The chief oil analyst at GasBuddy.com in Wall Township expects pump prices will fall as demand drops after Labor Day.

“I believe that if there’s some sort of stability in the Mideast or a little bit of a calming there that crude oil prices will back off, and gasoline prices this fall will drop to about where they did last year, which is somewhere between $3 and $3.25 in New Jersey and maybe a little bit higher than that nationally,” said Tom Kloza.

Kloza cautions, though, that the cost of heating oil, which is now about $4 a gallon, will probably rise as demand increases as the fall and winter arrive.