Mandy Bright was just getting used to low gas prices when they started disappearing in the rearview mirror.
Average prices around Atlanta are up more than 40 cents a gallon in the past month, hitting $2.09 by Friday, according to GasBuddy.com.
While prices are still lower than a year ago, that kind of rise is no casual concern for people like Bright. She drives 60 miles roundtrip from her home near Rome to the hospital in Paulding where she works as a respiratory therapist. She drives a fairly efficient Toyota Camry, which helps, but her husband drives a pick-up and works in Anniston, Ala.
Together they spend more than $200 a week on gasoline. So when the price goes up, they notice, she said. “It makes a big difference.”
Prices around metro Atlanta bottomed out at about $1.63 a gallon in late February. Adjusted for inflation, that put them at 1960s levels and gave consumers a shot in the wallets.
Now they’re digging a bit deeper again.
“We are already strapped for cash,” Bright said. “That’s why I’m worried about it – because summertime is coming.”
She knows: this is the season for rising prices.
A spring ritual
Pump prices typically rise through the spring as U.S. refineries switch over to more expensive summer blends and demand shoots up as schools let out and families take vacations.
This year the spring uptick has been more of a spike.
Why, the beleaguered motorist asks? The price of oil globally is still low, and supplies of petroleum are up. And that is usually a formula for lower prices.
But gasoline inventories have dropped dramatically, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“Motorists shouldn’t necessarily expect the worst increases to be over just yet,” said Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. “Until the bulk of refinery maintenance season wraps up in late May, we likely won’t see lower oil prices immediately bring relief to the pump.”
The long view offers consolation. Gas prices have been relatively low since cresting at an average of $3.70 a gallon in the spring of 2014. Prices fell sharply for nearly a year, rising only moderately in the next spring before sliding again through the rest of 2015.
In that time, gas has not even approached $3 a gallon.
Flirting with $4
And $3 would have seemed cheap during most of the period between late 2010 and the summer of 2014. The average gas price flirted several times with $4 a gallon, although it did not match the $4.11 high of 2008.
For the environment, higher prices can be a positive, since they provide an incentive to drive less or purchase a more efficient vehicle.
But for the individual – and the economy – higher pump prices are like a tax, an unhelpful add-on to purchases most consumers must make. In fact, much of what is paid at the pump is a tax – including slices taken by local and state government.
A lot of that money gets recycled into the regional economy to pay for road maintenance and other government operations. But much of the rest of the expense leaves the local economy and goes to global energy companies and foreign governments.
Most recessions since World War II were linked to rising energy prices, although the economy is nowhere near as dependent on oil as it used to be. And so far, the increase is modest.
Moreover, global demand for oil remains muted and production ample.
But for the next couple months, expect the price at the pump to rise — and there just isn’t much you can do about it, sighed Mandy Bright.
“I have to work. I am not going to change jobs.”
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