Gas Prices Hover at $4 a Gallon, But May Have Peaked
Gas prices are a huge point of contention this election season, with Newt Gingrich even promising that gas will drop to $2.50 a gallon and that everyone in America will get a brand new puppy and a Swedish au pair if he is elected president. (Spoiler alert: Even the Tea Party didn’t fall for that one.)
Out here in New York, gas prices top out four bucks a gallon, far more in the city and in certain areas, like near the beach. (Pumping gas, you mentally tick away how many Caramel Brulee lattes you could have purchased if gas cost what it did just a few years ago.) But it seems that no matter what campaign promises pop up from likely sources, high gas prices are not only here to stay but also out of the control of the sitting president. (Video below.)
It may be a sign of acceptance of an eternity of gas pump horror that the good news is that gas prices may have peaked. According to ABC, the spike in gas prices most of us saw last week were not a fluctuation per se, but down to seasonal changes from winter gas prices to summer gas prices. BusinessWeek quoted Trilby Lundberg of Lundberg Survey, who cites daylight savings time and “refinery glitches that caused some wholesale markets to jump” as part of the reason gas prices spiked again last week- Lundberg says:
“If crude oil prices don’t spike right now there’s a very good chance that retail prices may peak… It would take another crude oil spike to send retail prices up further.”
The report indicates that here on Long Island, gas prices jumped to about $4.05 per gallon in many areas, higher than the national average. But drivers in congestion-heavy Los Angeles have got it even worse, with many shelling out an average of $4.34 per gallon since gas prices spiked in March.
