Gas prices finally begin their spring climb

ALBANY — Ouch! The spring sting looks like it has finally arrived at the nation’s gas pumps.

The average gas price at the local, state and national levels all moved up more than 4 cents per gallon over the past week, bringing an end to what had been unseasonably low retail gas prices.

“We long anticipated seeing gasoline prices beginning to rise en masse in the spring, but, uncharacteristically, it took until nearly April Fool’s Day for it to begin,” Patrick DeHaan, the senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, said. “There’s no fooling this time — the rally in prices does seem to be more credible as oil and gasoline markets rebound.”

GasBuddy’s Fuel Insights and AAA Auto Club Group’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report both showed a week-to-week increase of more than 4 cents per gallon nationally on Monday, with their morning benchmarks at $2.329 and $2.326, respectively. That’s less than a penny higher than AAA’s survey found on March 3, while GasBuddy’s was a half-cent lower than last month.

“Motorists should expect more volatility at the pump in the coming months,” Josh Carrasco, a AAA spokesman, said. “Declining gasoline inventories, like we saw last week, normally trigger a rise in gas prices. But increased domestic oil production could put a ceiling on historic springtime increases at the pump.”

Both organizations survey thousands of retail gas outlets nationally. In Georgia, the average Monday was slightly more than $2.20 on both surveys, 4.6 cents higher than last week according to AAA and 5.5 cents higher on GasBuddy’s survey. Both had the Monday average a little more than a penny below last month.

The Daily Fuel Gauge Report also looks at Georgia’s eight largest metro areas. On Monday, Albany’s five-county area ranked in the middle of the pack, coming in at fourth-lowest at $2.146, an increase of 3.8 cents in a week, but just over a half-cent below last month. It was 17.8 cents more than metro Albany motorists were paying April 3, 2016.

The metro area with the lowest average Monday was Augusta, which edged Macon by a tenth of a cent despite the biggest jump of the week for a Georgia metro area — 7.1 cents. The highest average was Atlanta, which increased 5.6 cents in a week to hit $2.228 per gallon. All eight metro areas saw increases in their average gas prices, with the smallest in Columbus, which rose a penny.

Carrasco noted that wholesale gas prices rose 7 cents last week as demand rose and gasoline supplies fell, which is normal for this time of year when refineries sell off their remaining winter-blend gasoline and work toward the May 1 deadline for completing the switch to summer-blend gasoline. Crude oil settled above $50 Friday for the first time since March 7, while AAA said the Energy Information Administration reports that demand in late March had increased 3.5 percent, placing it 3 percent higher than in 2016.

AAA market watchers say they expect the national average for a gallon of gasoline to increase 40 cents this summer, reaching close to $2.70, which would be 70 cents higher than last summer. Over the past five years, gas prices have increased 35-70 cents per gallon from the February low to Memorial Day, the traditional start of the summer driving season, AAA said.

GasBuddy experts also expressed optimism that the “spring sting” won’t be on the high end of the scale.

“Last Wednesday’s weekly report from the Energy Information Administration provided some energy for the storms to develop at gas pumps based on a weak showing in crude oil inventories — barely increasing as supply and demand finally sees more balance, pushing oil prices higher,” DeHaan said. “Motorists should expect to see a more sustained upward trend at the pump through Memorial Day, but thankfully the seasonal rise could still be less severe than what we’ve seen in prior years.”