Denver gas prices rose again last week, and looking at the larger trend the increase was not unexpected, one expert said.

The price for an average gallon of gas in Denver last week was up 8.5 cents from the previous week, sitting at $3.22 on Monday, according to a GasBuddy survey of 844 Denver stations.

“It was a price cycle again,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, told The Denver Gazette in an email. “Right on schedule, so to speak.”

De Haan explained that Denver saw price cycling increases on May 29 and again on June 11, but that prices have started to dip since then.

“Another one is likely around June 25 or so but could come sooner as wholesale gas prices are up slightly,” De Haan said.

Price cycling is a practice in which gas stations drop their prices to compete with neighboring gas stations until they reach a point where they’re losing money per gallon, then push prices higher to restore profit margins and everyone else follows. Then the cycle begins anew.

Despite the recent switch to reformulated gas (RFG), which many experts predicted would drive Denver gas prices as much as 50 cents to $1 per gallon higher, prices in Denver on Monday were 11.8 cents per gallon lower than a month ago and 24.5 cents lower than a year ago.

Motorists in what’s called the Denver Metro/North Front Range Ozone Non-Attainment Area face the more expensive gas after the Environmental Protection Agency a few years ago downgraded the region to “severe,” which triggered a requirement to use RFG this summer.

De Haan and AAA Colorado spokesman J. Skyler McKinley both recently said it was unlikely Denver would see huge gas price increases as a result of RFG.

Nationally, the average price of a gallon of gasoline ticked up 1 cent per gallon last week, closing out the week at $3.41 per gallon. Overall, the price of a gallon of gas nationally is 18 cents cheaper than a month ago and 13.8 cents cheaper than a year ago, according to GasBuddy data from more than 150,000 gas stations across the country.

“Since the national average price of gasoline fell to its lowest June level since 2021 last week, we’ve seen the drop in prices take a break, with some states seeing a small rise over the last week,” De Haan said. “Thankfully, I expect this to be more like a short timeout, with an eventual return to falling gasoline prices in most states.”

De Haan said gasoline demand nationally has been running slightly weaker than expected, a good sign for motorists at the pump.