Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Atlanta motorists are paying about 20 cents more per gallon than two weeks ago.
Fuel price tracking website gasbuddy.com cites current Atlanta prices of about $3.22 per gallon, up from just over $3 a few days before Christmas.
Georgia's prices are a couple cents below the national average.
In recent days, crude oil prices have spiked due to increased hostility between the U.S. and Iran in the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz, a major thoroughfare for petroleum shipments.
Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told MSNBC the "psychological cost" of worry about what Iran will do next could add $10 to $20 per barrel. This tacks on roughly 25 to 50 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, he said.
Fuel prices could go higher. Gregg Laskoski, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com in Tampa, told The Daytona Beach News-Journal that gasoline could top $4 a gallon this year. Laskoski his forecast is based on the fact that gas prices the past several years have risen an average of more than 90 cents the next year from where they were recorded at the end of the previous year.
Three years ago, gasoline was only $1.70 a gallon in Atlanta. As the economy improved and demand for fuel increased, so have fuel prices. In early January 2010, gasoline was about $2.60 a gallon. In January 2011, $2.90 a gallon.
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