Posted on 05/27/2021 4:39:24 AM PDT by blam
Motorists will see the highest gasoline prices in seven years when they hit the roads this Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the summer driving season, as fuel demand surges alongside coronavirus vaccination rates.
Retail gasoline prices are at about $3.04 a gallon on average nationwide, the most expensive since 2014, data from the American Automobile Association showed.
And after a year of lockdowns to curb the coronavirus pandemic, tens of millions of American road-trippers are expected to be stung by those prices: More than 34 million Americans are expected to take to the highways between May 27 and May 31, AAA expects, an increase of 53% from last year but still down 10% from 2019.
"Ahead of Memorial Day, gas demand is expected to rise as more Americans take to the roads for trips that may have been delayed or avoided because of the pandemic," said Devin Gladden, AAA spokesperson.
U.S. gasoline demand is running at about 9.48 million barrels per day, the highest since March 2020, when U.S. officials began widely restricting travel, Energy Information Administration data showed.
Pump prices had already gotten a boost earlier this month after a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the nation's largest fuel pipeline, shut the system for days and stopped fuel supplies from moving across the United States.
Motorists fearing a longer outage raced to gas stations to fill up their tanks, emptying at one point more than 16,000 stations across states such as North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
Around 6,000 gas stations were still without fuel this week, according to tracking firm GasBuddy.
"This is still due to the Colonial outage recovery, plus high demand...
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
ChiCom Joe and his puppet handler’s America.
Highest in seven years... or, since Biden was vice president.
My prediction back in January. 3 dollars by Memorial Day.
Typical. Prices go up when travel is expected. Did anyone notice if that was happening when Trump was in office. I never paid attention because gas was a decent price.
Thanks(for nothing) Joe.
I call it Biden gas
Gosh, don’t you miss those days of sarcastic tweets and $2 gas?
“Prices go up when travel is expected. Did anyone notice if that was happening when Trump was in office. “
Nope. In fact, they went down during most holidays. We were energy independent, so we produced more to sell more.
I thought I noticed that the year before the china virus hit.
I’ve got a 600 mile road trip tomorrow. Much of it is through Pennsylvania which always has astronomically high gas prices. I should be able to make it through without stopping though.
On the flip side-Company car so the cost isn’t mine.
Prices always go up before big holidays. I got a 2018 jeep grand Cherokee a few months ago and there are only a couple things I don’t like about it and one is it is a gas hog. Not really a big deal for me because I don’t drive much these days. Still, until now, I never had a vehicle that cost more than $40 to fill the tank. Now it costs about $60.
Warren Buffett is fat and happy.
Last year he was losing money and said that it would take years to see these kinds of returns.
When will Piglosi start blaming the evil oil companies like she did when a barrel of oil went over $100.00?
I just picked up an older pickup (see what I did there) - a Ford 4x4 with a 7.5L gas V8. Great for towing, not so much for economy.
It’ll be fun to hot-rod, though.
Joseph Stolen messes with the supply and they blame the demand. These people are nuts.
And Deep State’s war on the red bits continues.
Gas prices have almost always increased toward the weekend and even more leading up to big travel holidays. During times of lower prices, the increases were smaller, but probably about the same percentage. At least while I paid attention to gas prices. Now that I have retired, my attention span for this is by the month, and not twice a week.
It's been reported that there will be more Americans on the highways this Memorial Day than almost ever before (due to the pandemic finally letting up) and the big gas station chains are taking full advantage of that. (That's not "supply and demand" my friends ... that's gouging.)
$3.15 here in South Central PA yesterday.
Retired too.
Since 911, I have never let my gasoline gauge in any of my vehicles get below 1/2. And, I usually have 10-20 gallons of 'marine' fuel on hand for lawn mowers and other small engines. My hurricane generator is propane(finally).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.