Oil prices have dropped to a one-week low on Monday after U.S. leaders announced a pause in airstrikes against Iran over the weekend.
But in the Denver metro area, gas prices have not experienced a significant drop in prices yet.
“Oil is down 7% but the wholesale price of gasoline is only down 2%," explained Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis. "That disconnect is because there were new Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries over the weekend, and of course, there's only a finite amount of refineries globally, so the fact that these attacks have occurred have knocked offline significant volumes of refining capacity, and that's why you may not see much relief at the pump just yet."
De Haan said the average gas price in the Denver metro has gone up about 18 cents a gallon in the last week with prices back above the $4-gallon mark with an average of $4.04.
“We saw a lot of stations jumping late last week. Since then, prices are inching down a little bit here… That's something we call price cycling. Once stations all go up, some of them start to undercut each other again, kind of like a mini price war,” De Haan said.
De Haan said even as hostilities between the U.S. and Iran and between Ukraine and Russia continue, hurricane season is currently underway which can bring its own unique set of challenges making it difficult to determine when gas prices will decrease and remain low.
