Gas Prices Continue to Climb
So are rising gasoline prices putting your household budget in the tank? Gas station visits are getting costlier by the day.
News flash: gas prices are going up... "It's about 25 cents more than I'm used to paying."
from Los Angeles... To New Jersey... "Theyr'e outta control."
From St. Louis to Tennessee you're forking over more at the pump and most drivers say they can't figure out why.
"It always has something to do with what's going on in the Middle East. You know what's goin on...same stuff that's been going on for the last...ten years."
Gas prices have increased 8% since the start of the year.
According to AAA the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded is now a buck fifty five for regular.
The cheapest gas is in Georgia, as low as $1.42. And on the high end, taking out Alaska and Hawaii, where gasoline is always more expensive in New York gas can be as high as $1.81, $1.82 in Connecticut, $1.88 in California. Though we found it just a hair shy of two bucks.
"One of the reasons is that the Venezuelan situation really impacted ... our supplies."
The strike in Venezuela is over and exports will now increase...yet there are other issues as well... for some reason demand, which is usually down this time of year... is up...
Bill O'Grady with A.G. Edwards said, "Now we don't know if that means more consumers are driving or we're starting to see gasoline horded throughout the rest of the distribution system."
Demand has increased at the same time refineries are seasonally offline for maintenance, cutting production. But that doesn't really matter because crude inventories are especially tight.
Of course, the fear of war with Iraq is hanging over everything.
During the last war with Iraq Mark Mahoney says crude shot up to $40 a barrel.
That changed once it became clear the U.S. would quickly win. But Bill O'Grady says if we go to war again, there are other variables to worry about.
"Like Iraq torches it's own oil wells like Iraq is somehow successful in hurting production in the other gulf countries, like we go to test the strategic petroleum reserve and we find out it doesn't quite work as well as we thought it would."
All these factors, the fear of war, low inventories, less output from refineries, unusually high demand: all happening as we head into the time of year when gas prices start to rise anyhow for the spring and summer vacations.
"We were planning on going on vacation in July...going to drive down to Virginia...but we're not gonna do that."
"We really have the perfect storm of influences."
"Now what I do now is I go buy half tanks, instead of a whole tank I get a half a tank...don't feel so bad."