U.S. Gasoline Climbs to $3.8148 a Gallon, Lundberg Survey Shows
By Barbara J. Powell and Moming Zhou.
The average price for regular gasoline at U.S. filling stations increased 12.31 cents to $3.8148 a gallon, according to Lundberg Survey Inc.
The price jump covers the two-week period ended March 9 and is based on the Camarillo, California-based company's survey of about 2,500 stations. The price is 30.87 cents higher than a year earlier, when the average was $3.5061.
"As refineries complete their maintenance, overall motor- gasoline supply will become more generous, and this will probably put a stop to the price rise," Trilby Lundberg, the president of Lundberg Survey, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "This of course depends on whether crude-oil prices cooperate."
Prices advanced as West Texas Intermediate crude in New York fell 2.2 percent to $107.40 a barrel, while Brent oil in London rose 0.4 percent to $125.98 in the two-week period from the last survey.
Gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped 17.96 cents, or 5.7 percent, to $3.3324 a gallon in the two weeks ended March 9.
U.S. gasoline stockpiles fell 396,000 barrels in the week ended March 2 to 229.5 million, a six-week low, the Energy Department reported March 7.
Gasoline consumption slipped 1.2 percent, and the amount of the fuel supplied over the past four weeks was 7.8 percent below a year earlier, department data show.
Retail Demand
Retail demand in the seven days ended March 2 declined 1.5 percent from the prior week and was 6.5 percent below a year earlier, according to MasterCard (MA) Inc.'s SpendingPulse report on March 6. Motor-fuel use during the previous four weeks was 6.3 percent below a year earlier, the 50th consecutive decline in that measure.
Crude prices may fall this week as calls for negotiations between nuclear powers and Iran may reduce tension that's helped bolster crude prices this year, a Bloomberg News survey showed.
Fourteen of 28 analysts, or 50 percent, forecast oil will fall through March 16. Ten respondents, or 36 percent, predicted prices will rise and four estimated there will be little change. Last week, 56 percent of surveyed analysts expected an increase.
Crude-oil supplies rose 832,000 barrels to 345.7 million in the seven days through March 2, according to the department, the highest level since September. Inventories (DOESCROK) at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for New York-traded West Texas Intermediate oil, increased 2.37 million barrels to 36.2 million, the highest level since July.
On Long Island, regular gasoline increased to $4 a gallon, according to Lundberg. Los Angeles-area retail stations averaged $4.35.
The highest price in the lower 48 U.S. states among the cities surveyed was in Los Angeles, Lundberg said. The lowest price was in Denver, Colorado, where customers paid an average of $3.36 a gallon.
The Japan-China connection: DeNA and Sina team upin mobile gaming
Japan's DeNA and China's Sina have teamed up to form a big mobile gaming market.
DeNA is a $1.4 billion company that operates the Mobage mobile social gaming network with 35 million lucrative users. Under the deal, Sina will enable users of its giant microblogging platform, Weibo.com, to log into DeNA's Mobage platform with their existing account information.
The move shows that Japan's DeNA is wasting no time in expanding from its Japanese and U.S. operations (it owns Ngmoco in San Francisco) to other big markets around the world as it seeks to build a multibillion-dollar mobile social gaming empire.
That means Weibo.com's 300 million members will be able to play the Chinese-language version of Mobage. DeNA and Sina plan to create a special Mobage web site under a Sina domain in April, where Weib.com users can download Mobage China games to their Android-based smartphones. The Mobage icon will appear inside the Weibo.com Android app, making it easy to log in.
About 50 percent of Weibo.com users access the service from mobile devices, and the Weibo.com mobile app has been downloaded more than 40 million times. DeNA launched Mobage China for Android in July 2011 and iOS in November. It has 30 games currently available.
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