By Rachel Pritchett
Kitsap gas prices, which never really recovered from a high of $4.37 in June 2008, hold no promise of going lower now.
“We’ll see a rise this spring. Beyond that, it’s hard to guess,” said Jennifer Cook, spokeswoman for AAA auto club.
Monday’s price for a gallon of unleaded in Kitsap stood at $3.55 a gallon, up nine cents from a month ago, and up 27 cents from a year ago.
Springtime typically sees a rise in gas prices as refineries reduce production to switch over from winter fuel blends to summer fuel blends and do maintenance. But the hike often follows a wintertime reduction in prices, which didn’t happen this year, Cook explained.
So the springtime rise will piggyback on already higher-than-expected prices.
“It will be interesting to see this year if the market can bear it,” she said.
The price of oil is hovering in the high 90’s now and on the way up in the past few days.
Pile on top of that the unrest in the Middle East for an even more unstable price environment. The European Union begins an oil embargo against Iran this summer, and Iran is threatening to cut off oil to the EU before that. And, growing unrest in Syria is being watched.
All that could push prices higher in coming months.
are you kidding me. this is ridiculous. We haven’t had a raise in 3 years, going on the 4th year now. Yet the cost of living keeps going up and up. And they want to raise the prices of gas once again. I was just being able to just barely make ends meet some months with the prices the way they are now. As a single parent, and only 1 job it is nearly impossible to live. I have to get a second job just to make it as it is, so I am at least comfortable and I am not trying to scrap up every last penny I have for gas or food or lunch for my kids at school. This is just getting insane to me. Think about how much unemployment is out there… find more jobs for people instead of raising gas prices.
What do you expect? Every year the price never gets down to the low point before it goes up. Look at the Oil company PROFITS! They don’t care as long as they make BILLIONS! Exxon 10 Billion profit, Shell 5.9 Billion. The real culprit, are speculators in the oil futures market who bid the prices up, hedging their pocketbooks on the belief that conflict will get worse in the Middle East.
Since the US gets the majority of its oil from Canada, why do we care so much about the Middle East? Also, are the oil companies sending so much gasoline out of the country just to further fatten their wallets? Gas was the number one export recently. Corporate greed has no place for patriotism.