Oil analyst: Gas prices rising but will drop after the summer season

You’ll notice it when you pull up to the pumps. The price of gasoline is going up, and an analyst says it could get even more costly.

Tom Kloza is the global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, New Jersey. He said the recent seven-dollar-a-barrel increase in the cost of crude oil has pushed gasoline prices higher by about 15 cents a gallon in a month.

“We’re approaching the highs that we saw, for the year, back in mid-April. In New Jersey we got up to about $2.45 and the country the high was $2.42. And there’s a good chance that this month we may exceed the highs for the year.”

But Kloza said he believes the price rise is nearing an end.

“We’re looking at maybe the last hundred days of every year now in a steady downtrend as people don’t shop at suburban malls as much, and they do a lot more online shopping. The other thing that changes, and it changes in September, is a recipe for gasoline. A lot of cheaper hydrocarbons can be put into the gasoline mixture. Gasoline in actually six to ten components, and some of those components can’t be used in the summer, but in the fall they can, and that probably accounts for a 10 or a 15 cent drop in and of itself,” said Kloza.

By the end of the year Kloza predicts gasoline could go down to about $2.10 or $2.20 a gallon.