County Average Gas Price Hits $4.03 a Gallon
By Stephanie Hoops, Ventura County Star, Calif.
May 23–Gas prices reached new records today.
Ventura County’s average price for regular unleaded gas surged to $4.03 a gallon today, breaking a once unimaginable price barrier by jumping 5 cents overnight.
At this time last year, there was public outrage because the county average was considered unreasonably high — $3.42 a gallon.
California’s average also reached a record $4.05 a gallon today, as the price for light, sweet crude oil rose 33 cents to $131.14 a barrel during trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The increases are in line with what experts predicted Thursday — that gas prices would top $4 this weekend.
Unlike this time last year, when gas prices were at their peak for 2007, pump prices show no signs of halting their assault on the record books.
“Four dollars (a gallon) is a done deal now,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill. “We could go significantly above that.”
On average, drivers in Alaska, Connecticut, California, New York and Illinois are already paying more than $4 for gas, and an increasing number of stations around the country are posting prices higher than $4.
In Alaska, where the average price of regular gas stood at a national high of $4.18 Friday, it now costs $94 to fill an Explorer, and $77 to fill an Accord.
Nationally, the price of a gallon of regular gas rose 4.4 cents overnight to a record average of $3.88, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices are headed even higher in coming days because oil continues to set new records, surpassing $135 a barrel before retreating Thursday. “We’re going to see some more significant increases here in light of what we’ve seen in the last few days,” said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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