Gas prices may have seemed to begun to level out in the past two weeks or so, but unfortunately, it looks like the price hikes are far from over.
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Overnight on Monday, the national average gas price per gallon jumped roughly five cents to $4.374 on Tuesday, an all-time high for the country that doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.
Prior to this week, March 11 of this year held the record for the highest national average ever with $4.33 per gallon.
Tuesday’s average is a shocking $1.407 increase from where national averages were one year ago, per AAA.
Diesel was also seeing sky-high numbers, with the national average up to $5.55 per gallon.
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Long lines at gas stations and never-before-seen high prices to fill up tanks have been plaguing Americans in recent months due to supply-chain issues, inflation and fuel disruptions as a result of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Russian oil coming off the global market would come with a cost, and Americans are seeing that at the pump,” the White House said at the end of March.
Prices seemed to temporarily level (even drop off) in April when the U.S. began tapping its oil reserves to put more fuel on the market, but over a month later, inflation seems to be rising again.
As far as individual states go, New York reached record highs on Tuesday of $4.671 per gallon, nearly 30 cents above the national average.
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Other states that saw record highs on Tuesday were Illinois ($4.693 per gallon), Oregon ($4.851), Washington ($4.871), Idaho ($4.4.84), Colorado ($4.101), Montana ($4.226), Wyoming ($4.220), New Mexico ($4.211), South Dakota ($4.099), Texas ($4.068), Iowa ($4.083), Wisconsin ($4.177), Indiana ($4.328), Tennessee ($4.125), Kentucky ($4.096), West Virginia ($4.198), Ohio ($4.177), Michigan ($4.346), Rhode Island ($4.413), New Hampshire ($4.342), Maryland ($4.414), Washington D.C. ($4.711), Hawaii $5.299, Pennsylvania ($4.541), New Jersey ($4.490), Delaware ($4.404) and Massachusetts ($4.427).
“With the cost of oil accounting for more than half of the pump price, more expensive oil means more expensive gasoline,” Andrew Gross, a spokesperson for AAA, said in a statement per NBC News. “These prices are creeping closer to those record high levels of early March.”
With Memorial Day and summer travel season just around the corner, it’s clear that the demand for fuel will do anything but stay stagnant, let alone decrease.
As of late Tuesday afternoon, WTI crude oil was estimated to be 99.58 per barrel.