Uh-oh — gas is apparently cheaper than Roadguy thought
Posted on June 11th, 2008 – 2:48 PMBy Roadguy
So I heard back from the local AAA office, and despite what you may have seen around town in the past few days, the official Twin Cities average price for a gallon of regular unleaded has not topped $4 — Dawn Duffy says the number is around $3.94 right now. So I’ll plan to give Prof. S. his prize anyway (Twincitiesgasprices.com says the average is above $4). Then I’ll shell out another $4 for whoever actually wins. My apologies for the confusion.
4 Responses to "Uh-oh — gas is apparently cheaper than Roadguy thought"
Hooray, I still have a chance!!! I totally forgot what date I put down, though… lol.
Probably don’t need to bet on dates–maybe bet on the TIME!
I will guess 12:45 tomorrow afternoon! 
I’ll give Roadguy the benefit of the doubt. On Monday afternoon, all the stations around my home were at $4.049, but most came back down to between $3.949 and $3.999 by Tuesday morning.
Yeah, the AAA uses a completely different methodology than the GasBuddy sites do, basing the price on credit card transactions, while GasBuddy sites use spotters. One problem with the spotter system is that people probably pay more attention when the price goes up than when it goes down. They’re also more biased toward stations that have big, visible signage.
I suppose it’s also possible gas price sites are actually showing an effect. Maybe people really did only pay $3.94/gal — possibly because they were hunting for cheaper gas, or only putting a few gallons in the tank, etc.
However, I’ve also heard that the Oil Price Information Service which the AAA price is based on actually lags quite a bit in their data. Some price tracking sites use OPIS data directly, but it can be days old sometimes.
In many places, the lag isn’t such a big deal since prices move gradually in many markets. However, the Twin Cities is one place where prices tend to spike for a day or two, then go down gradually for several days, then spike again. Occasionally, the declines can be pretty fast too. As of 9:55 AM today, twincitiesgasprices.com is showing a local average of $3.983.
