Posted on 04/06/2008 11:05:38 AM PDT by kellynla
NEW YORK — Retail gas prices surged to another milestone, rising above $3.30 a gallon Friday, and appear poised to rise further in coming weeks as supplies tighten.
Oil prices, meanwhile, supported the gas price rally by jumping more than $2 a barrel after a dismal employment report sent the dollar lower.
At the pump, gas prices rose 1.4 cents overnight to a national average of $3.303 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That's the latest in a series of records, and about 60 cents higher than a year ago.
In Ventura County, the average price of regular unleaded hit a record $3.68 a gallon Friday, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.
During the past week, prices in the county have been climbing by a few cents per day.
A few weeks ago, Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said he expected prices to fall as oil speculators backed off.
Now, he's not so sure.
"We could very likely see $4," he said. "It's going to be painful."
As investors are fleeing to commodities such as oil, gold, wheat and corn, people are starting to look at Washington, D.C., to curb speculation, Kyser said.
"You have speculators globally now," Kyser said.
"This is going to be a tough time for anybody who has to use an oil-based product. We've already seen chaos in the aviation industry, with Aloha and ATA going out of business."
While oil's surge above $100 over the past month has boosted gas prices so far this year, analysts now expect gas prices to continue rising regardless of what direction crude takes. The Energy Department expects prices to peak near $3.50 a gallon later in the spring, but many analysts predict that the spike could approach $4.
That's because gasoline supplies are falling, in part because producers are cutting back on output of the fuel because of the high cost of crude — the more expensive crude is, the more refiners have to pay and the lower their profits are.
They're also in the process of switching from producing winter grades of gasoline to the less polluting but more expensive grade of fuel required in the summer.
"That cuts back on some of the supply and helps to pump up the price," said Mike Pina, spokesman for AAA.
The margin between the price that refiners pay for crude and receive for selling the products they make from it is about $11 to $12 a barrel right now, according to the Oil Price Information Service.
However, that margin has occasionally slipped into negative territory in recent weeks and is well below margins of $37 a barrel that refiners earned last spring.
In futures trading, meanwhile, oil futures rose Friday after the Labor Department said employers cut payrolls by 80,000 jobs last month, much more than analysts had expected.
The unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent.
That news sent the dollar lower and pushed light, sweet crude for May delivery up $2.40 to settle at $106.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gasoline futures for May delivery rose 3.24 cents to settle at $2.7567 a gallon.
Gasoline futures were also boosted Friday by a fire that shut down part of a refinery in Torrance.
bttt
Drugs are a blight on America.
“This is caused almost entirely by leftie environmentalists”
100% right. Take a closer look at the situations they cause. You will quickly understand their impact on middle east and other world conflicts. They want to “save the planet” by destroying civilized society. At least for everybody but themselves.
Considering that from the price meltdown in 98-99 as the result of an erroneous EIA report which anticipated a worldwide glut of oil (somehow they forgot Asia), the stripper wells which were plugged, the obstruction of drilling at every turn by Federal, state agencies and legislatures, I'd say the congress investigating the "oil barons" is about like a group of muggers investigating why the victim wasn't carrying enough money to buy them all a steak dinner and drinks afterward.
Government is the problem, not the solution.
How come the magnanimous Congress hasn't cut their chunk of the pie? They took in a bunch on fuel taxes without ever risking a dime of their or their stockholders' money.
LOL! Then there'd be a firefighter shortage...
If you do them up, I’ll host them for you on my ftp.
I’ll send you a FReepmail with my email add’y.
make that four! Check your freepmail.
Thanks!
To bad 80 percent of the vehicles nowadays are not even high enough to crawl under, let alone put a 5 gallon gas can under it.
Again, if prices continue to rise, syphoning fuel crimes will be the least of our worries.
“I think this is the time of year when refineries have to shut down to switch over to, what I call, the “Summer Flavor” of gasoline to satisfy the EPA and state regulations.”
I think you’re right but, although refiners were blamed in the headline, did you see your explanation anywhere in the story? Yep, those greedy refiners just cut production for capricious unknown reasons.
5
Please
Thanks
BTTT for printing at work
Two words..
Gas Riots.
Gas is the new bread..
Can you post them in a readable/printable format?
Thanks
I'd like to tape them on every gas pump within 3.7k miles
It makes me so happy to the the price of gasoline rising—I’m invested in it.
Federal Reserve can pull out all of the financial stops and play all of the games they want. They can fudge the inflation rates, print tons of money and bail out banks that make bad business decisions. But none of these games creates useful things like gasoline, wheat or oil. It makes me laugh to think off all of the poor people that vote for Democrats who won’t let us do anything to add supply and bring down energy prices. It will be funny to watch them need to decide between food and gasoline when a loaf a bread is $8 and a gallon of gas is $10.
WOW! I had no idea there were so many here interested.
I get home from work tonight at about 19:30 Mountain Time. I’ll take care of all of you then when I get to my home PC with the file.
Thanks!
Not every Californian is responsible for the problem, but the state government is deeply responsible. They started the whole gasoline additive business, and the stricter pollution standards, and they have prevented companies from producing enough energy in state, so they rely on neighboring states for their power. No new refineries or power plants, no drilling offshore, and then blame some company in Texas for overcharging them.
Other states have followed California’s example, but they took the lead.
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