Georgia. Gas Prices Hit Record High
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ATLANTA (AP) -- Pat Williams had to reach deep into her pockets when gassing up her champagne-colored Lexus SUV at the BP station in Atlanta. The bill for her biweekly fill-up rang up to $38, as Georgia's gas prices hit a record high Thursday, according to the AAA Auto Club. "I think it's very disppointing. Unfortunately, it's even higher in Florida, where we are a lot," Williams said. "Now, with the economy, it's not the time for me to buy a new car... but it just takes a lot of gas to run an SUV." The state known for posting the lowest gas prices in the nation recorded an average of almost $1.56 per gallon for regular unleaded gas, sailing past its previous record of $1.47 per gallon set in May of 2001. Drivers in Savannah suffered the biggest strain on their wallets, paying an average of nearly $1.60 per gallon Thursday. Georgia was just one of 17 states to break gas price records over the past week. Other states posting record highs include: • Alaska • Alabama • Arizona • California • Florida • Louisiana • Maine • Mississippi • North Carolina • Nevada • Oregon • South Carolina • Tennessee • Utah • Vermont • Washington San Francisco came in with the highest price in the country at $2.25 cents per gallon. AAA, which surveys more than 60,000 gas stations daily, has been tracking prices since the mid-1970s.
"We really saw a lot of speculative pricing in the fourth quarter of 2002 because the talk of war with Iraq has been going on for a while," said Gregg Laskoski, spokesman for the AAA Auto Club South, which serves Georgia, Florida and parts of Tennessee.
Experts have also attributed increases to lowered supplies from the harsh winter and West Coast refineries switching over to corn-based additives from MTBE, an additive that is blamed for polluting drinking water after it leaked from storage tanks, which temporarily cut gas supplies. Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for AAA's national office, said the biggest price jumps have come in the West Coast and Southeast. West Coast increases came largely from the annual changeover from winter to summer gasoline formulas, which temporarily restricts supply. California, Washington and Nevada are among those states with the earliest changeover deadlines.
Price increases in the Southeast have been exacerbated by the oil strike in Venezuela, which supplies as much as 13 percent of U.S. fuel -- particularly to that region.
"When that oil strike came about, those fuel sources almost diminished to nothing," Laskoski said, adding that the effects of that strike are expected to be felt though the latter part of this year.
Sundstrom said drivers can expect prices to continue rising, as the rest of the country also gradually converts to cleaner burning fuel.
"We'll get a better feel this summer once everybody implements their warm weather fuel blends," he said.