Boulder County gas prices are 72 cents more per gallon than the national average.
Across Colorado, average gas prices remain over $4 a gallon, compared to the national average of $3.36 a gallon, according to AAA gas prices. The Boulder-Longmont area gas prices averaged $4.08 a gallon on Tuesday.
Last month, gas prices were $3.74 in the area, reflecting the sharp increase in Colorado gas prices. The U.S. Energy Information Administration confirmed in a February report that the outage at Suncor Energy was contributing to higher gas prices in the region.
While nationally gas prices fell three cents from last week, Boulder County gas only went down by one cent. AAA attributed the decrease to the drop in oil prices, but gas demand did increase slightly last week.
“If gas demand keeps rising amid tightening domestic stocks, drivers may see an end to future pump price drops,” the AAA report cautioned.
According to AAA, Colorado has the fifth highest average gas price in the country right now, behind Hawaii, California, Nevada and Washington.
A malfunction closed Suncor’s plant in Commerce City, and officials said it won't be fully operational again until the end of March. Suncor provides about a third of the gasoline used in Colorado as the only refinery currently active in the state.
“The Commerce City outage means that the refinery will not be producing fuels to meet this demand locally,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration report said. “Instead, the region will need to draw from existing regional inventories and to transfer petroleum products from other out-of-state refineries.”
The report predicts that gas prices in the region will continue to increase in March and April, reflecting normal seasonal demand patterns on top of the existing low inventories.
