$3 A GALLON, HERE WE COME!
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 -- 12:25 PM
There seems to be a lot less buzz about it, but gas prices in Wisconsin are inching toward $3 per gallon.According to Wisconsingasprices.com, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded sits at $2.97 today. One station is Elk Mound is selling it for $3.19.
"We're seeing crude oil hover around $86 per barrel. Driving has picked up," says Erin Roth, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Petroleum Council. "We've seen about a 4% increase in demand. This is normal coming into the Memorial Day weekend, then it kind of levels off at that point."
The government doesn?t anticipate gas prices getting much higher than $3 per gallon this summer, but no one can predict the unexpected, Roth warns.
For instance, the oil rig explosion in the Gulf hasn?t impacted the price of crude oil much, but it could have a long-term impact.
"The rig is one-tenth of one-percent of the oil rigs in the Gulf. However, we'll have to see long term how it affects the shutting down of other rigs as the clean-up continues," he explains.
It does seem we?ve become a bit desensitized to high gas prices. Roth says $2 per gallon gasoline used to trigger a flood of calls to his office.
"It's the world we live in now with the emerging economies of China and India that are causing a huge demand problem for us in the U.S., as we try to explore for more oil, here, in our own backyard," Roth says.
The cheapest gas in the state can be found in Shawano, where a gallon of regular unleaded is still about $2.81.
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