Gas prices continue to rise and can change dramatically in just a few hours. Gas is already $.12 more than just yesterday, and it jumped $.46 per gallon in just a week. Gas is now an average of $3.96 per gallon for regular unleaded gas. That’s $.71 more than last month and $1.38 more than this time last year.
According to a report released Monday morning, Gainesville has one of the lowest gas prices in the state at $3.88 per gallon. In some counties, mostly in South Georgia and the Coastal Georgia region’s, gas is already over $4.00 per gallon on average.
Crude oil prices continue to surge as the conflict between Ukraine and Russia continues to bring uncertainty to the market. “Georgia gas price average is approaching $4 per-gallon statewide,” said Montrae Waiters, AAA-The Auto Club Group spokeswoman. “Pump prices sharp rise is primarily due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, which is causing crude oil prices to climb above $100 per barrel.”
To help counter the impact of rising oil prices, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has coordinated a release of 60 million barrels of crude oil from its 31 member countries’ strategic reserves, including the U.S., Germany, Canada, South Korea and Mexico.
The announcement of the release did not detail the amount of each contribution from each country, but half of the release – 30 million barrels – is expected to come from the U.S. However, the pricing impact from the announcement has been limited given that the amount of oil is small in comparison to the amount of oil that flows daily from Russia around the globe. According to IEA, Russia exports approximately 5 million barrels a day of crude oil, representing about 12 percent of global trade. The market will likely continue to increase the price of oil as more sanctions are imposed on Russia. A potential ban of crude imports from Russia to the U.S. or other countries will likely cause prices to continue to rise to reflect more risk of disruption to tight global oil supplies.
