The price of gasoline on Monday morning was higher by just over a penny a gallon compared with last week’s national average pump price for regular gasoline. Compared with the same day last year, Monday’s national average price of $2.410 is about 35 cents a gallon higher.
Monday’s price is the highest in 19 months, since early September of 2015.
The price of crude oil has risen more than 12% since March 21, while gasoline prices have risen by about 5%. What that means for U.S. motorists is that pump prices are likely to rise as gasoline prices catch up with crude oil prices.
GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan said:
The national average gasoline price climbed to its highest level since September 5, 2015, on the $6 per barrel rise in oil prices over the last few weeks, supported by last week’s decline in oil inventories and pressure from geopolitical tensions. … While some states in the Great Lakes saw average gasoline prices ease after leading the nation by rising double digits each of the last two weeks, most the country saw a continued rise. However, the national average may reach its peak for the year in the next few weeks barring major escalation in Syria as refiners have generally concluded seasonal maintenance work and summer gasoline’s May 1st deadline for refiners is just around the corner.
Gas prices rose in 41 states over the past week. The five states with the largest increases were Delaware (nine cents a gallon) and Idaho (seven cents), followed by Vermont, Colorado and Iowa (six cents).
The five states where prices slipped the most were Michigan (seven cents), Indiana and Ohio (six cents), Illinois (three cents) and Missouri (two cents).
No state showed an average of below $2.00 a gallon Monday morning. The five states with the lowest prices are South Carolina ($2.124 a gallon), Oklahoma ($2.156), Mississippi ($2.169), Arkansas ($2.173) and Tennessee ($2.173). States posting the highest prices are Hawaii ($3.074 a gallon), California ($3.007), Washington ($2.892), Alaska ($2.849) and Oregon ($2.748).
The most common price across the country is $2.299, with the highest 5% of stations charging an average of $3.168 and the lowest 5% of stations charging $2.080. Less than 0.5% of U.S. gas stations are charging less than $2.00 a gallon as of Monday morning.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil for May delivery traded down about 0.3% Monday morning at $53.04 a barrel, just four cents a barrel below last Monday’s closing price of $53.08.
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