Gas Prices Start Slow Climb Up
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iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — American motorists aren’t going to love this.
Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, reports that the price of gasoline could rise as much as ten cents a gallon by Valentine’s Day. It’s already up two cents over the past week to about $2.06 a gallon nationally.
This development comes after seven straight months of falling crude oil costs, mainly because of overproduction and lack of demand.
However, oil prices have bounced back so strongly over the past few days that they have technically climbed into bull market territory, often classified as a jump of 20 percent from the cyclical low.
One of the reasons for the comeback is that oil companies stopped production at nearly 100 U.S. rigs last month, and “major producers such as Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips have slashed billions of dollars from their investment programs,” according to The Financial Times.
Meanwhile, a strike by workers at nine oil refineries in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington that occurred after bargaining talks between the United Steelworkers Union and U.S. refiners broke down is not expected to have much effect on gasoline prices.
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