toledoblade.com --

If you think it's a pain guessing whether the price of gasoline will be higher or lower tomorrow when deciding to refill your car, imagine how Roy Clark feels. He buys gasoline by the truckload.

With wholesale prices moving by as much as 20 cents a gallon on a single day, the timing of Mr. Clark's buying decisions can make thousands of dollars of difference for 39 Toledo-area convenience stores for which he manages operations.

"I don't own an oil well. I don't have a refinery," Mr. Clark, vice president of operations for JF Enterprises, said yesterday.

"Nobody tells me why it goes up or down, I just buy it. People get mad at me because it goes up, but the price I pay goes up 20 cents one day, and down the next."

For the most part, gasoline prices have been dropping in recent weeks, although Mr. Clark, whose stores include the Barney's chain of BP stations in northwest Ohio, said the wholesale quotes he receives were on the rise yesterday, coinciding with a $2 jump in crude oil prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Depending on where motorists went in northwest Ohio, drivers still might pay more than $3 a gallon for unleaded regular near Toledo Express Airport, or as little as $2.42 a gallon in Bowling Green, according to the Web site gasbuddy.com.

Prices were significantly higher in southeast Michigan, which was why Rhonda Wallace, of Monroe, stopped at a Barney's on Alexis Road at North Detroit Avenue, where regular cost $2.629 for cash customers and $2.689 for credit cards.

"I come down from Monroe to save money on cigarettes and gas," she said.

Gasbuddy reported the average price of regular unleaded in the Toledo area yesterday was $2.721 a gallon, 26 cents below the national average, 28 cents cheaper than a week ago, and $1.23 cheaper than a month ago, when prices were starting to descend from a spike induced by Hurricane Ike's landfall on the Texas coast.

Gasoline is about eight cents cheaper a gallon in Toledo than it was a year ago, according to the Web site - a significant reduction from record-high prices, often above $4 a gallon, posted during the spring and summer.

AAA Northwest Ohio offered similar survey results, reporting a local average of $2.771 a gallon for regular yesterday, down from $4 a month ago and $2.817 a year ago.

"It's due to a slowing economy, not because the world has suddenly remedied its need for energy," AAA spokesman Sue McCloskey said.

That statement echoed a blog posted Wednesday by Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.

"It would be good if we achieved this via a strong energy policy, conservation, or some sort of dynamic technological breakthrough," Mr. Kloza wrote. "But we're achieving this 2008 weight loss via illness. The economy is quite sick and that's why demand is down by nearly 10 percent from the same days in 2007."

Perversely, the shrinking demand for oil may have indirectly caused yesterday's price jump on commodities markets because traders responded to an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announcement that it will convene next week, instead of next month, to consider production cutbacks.

Analysts said OPEC could decide to trim output by as much as 1 million barrels a day in a bid to halt the price slide.

That would be in addition to a 500,000-barrel-a-day cut announced last month.

That may have led some traders to bid up oil, though any rally likely will be short-lived given the rapidly waning appetite for petroleum products, said Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Conn.

"Demand is really in trouble," Mr. Armstrong said.

"Every week we get figures showing falling U.S. demand for energy. European demand is just beginning to turn down, and all indications are that China is in for a significant economic downturn."

"We could have prices in the low $60 [a barrel] range very soon," he added.

Yesterday's NYMEX close of $71.85 a barrel for November delivery was less than half the record $147.27 close that market posted on July 11.

AAA, OPIS, and Wright Express said the national average price for regular, $3.04 a gallon, was still higher than a year ago, but further declines are likely.

Exactly three months after the national average peaked at $4.114 a gallon, 23 states now have average pump prices below $3, according to AAA, and the average for the entire country is expected to hit that mark sometime this weekend.

National average prices haven't been below $3 since Feb. 16.

"Depending upon how things go in the next few months, we might have another significant move down in gas prices. You're probably talking another 20 cents lower," said Gene McGillian, an analyst at TFS Energy LLC, also in Stamford.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Contact David Patch at:
dpatch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6094.

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