Gasoline Prices

THESE DAYS, a trip to the gas station can wreck your afternoon -- especially if you own a burly pickup truck, or one of those SUVs that licks its chops the second you pull up to the pumps.Gasoline prices, after hitting a multiyear low in February, have surged a numbing 39 percent, to an average retail price of $1.26 per gallon. That's a three-year high, says one government survey.Higher gasoline prices nearly always rankle U.S. consumers, partly because we view driving a gas-guzzler as an American birthright.

GASOLINE prices are continuing to drop as supply outpaces demand. Last week, the Lundberg Survey of 10,000 stations nationwide reported the average price for self-serve regular fuel was 96.95 cents per gallon while the average of all grades was $1.03 -- below the all-time low of nearly $1.04, adjusted for inflation, reached last month.Crude oil prices, while still near rock-bottom, increased somewhat in the past few weeks, and that pushed up wholesale gas costs in some areas, mainly in the Midwest.

WITH SUMMERLIKE weather beaming down on Baltimore, it's time to break out the essentials -- convertible, shades, Beach Boys tunes -- and cruise the highway like teen-agers. The asphalt is steaming, and Intrepid is ready to hit the road and race the wind.But we'd better rack up the miles before gas prices -- the lowest, on average, since April 1989 -- begin to creep up again, leaving the tank dry or the wallet empty.According to the March fuel survey conducted by the Maryland Division of AAA, regular grade self-serve gasoline prices in the state are, on average, 22.7 cents below March 1997 -- $1.03.

DURING the Arab oil boycott of 1974, Americans were shocked to learn that more than one-third of their oil came from abroad. But now, half does. The U.S. and its allies won World War II because they had 90 percent of the oil reserves that went to war. The war was won on U.S. oil exports. Those days are long gone.What this can mean is shown by the shock to Americans when gasoline prices recently shot up more than a nickel a gallon after months of flat, low prices had created a false illusion of price security.

Fueled by rising demand and market jitters over Nigerian oil production, gasoline prices in Maryland have jumped more than a nickel a gallon in the last month, the sharpest increase in three years, the Maryland Division of the American Automobile Association Mid-Atlantic reported yesterday.The rising prices, which have been building steadily since March, may go up again in October when the winter heating season begins, industry officials said, and could continue to move up steadily next year as the Japanese and European economies improve.

The sharp drop in the price of oil began to push down prices of gasoline at the retail level as the average national price fell by almost 2 cents a gallon for self-serve regular, according to a national survey.The Lundberg Survey, which traces gasoline prices every two weeks by polling about 10,000 stations, said the price fell by 1.96 cents, to $1.0606 a gallon, for regular unleaded, the best-selling type."That's a big drop," said Trilby Lundberg, the publisher of a newsletter based on the survey.

If you drove into a service station in Caracas, Venezuela, you could fill your tank, hand over a $5 bill (or its equivalent in bolivares) and get $2 back in change.But if you tried using that same $5 bill (or its value in yen) in Tokyo, you'd end up with only a little over a gallon of gas.While gasoline prices vary greatly worldwide, the price in most countries has fallen since the Persian Gulf war, according to a recent study of 18 cities by Runzheimer International, a management consultant company that specializes in transportation issues.

A Royal Cab driver, who prefers to be called simply Cosby, had a friendly wager going with the cashier at a Merit gas station on Eastern Avenue in southeast Baltimore.Cosby was betting yesterday that he couldn't fill his tank for less than $10.He lost the bet, but drove away happy -- the winner in a month-long price war among several filling stations along the Eastern Avenue corridor, just east of Francis Scott Key Medical Center.At Merit, which is leading the war, regular unleaded gas was selling for $1.189 a gallon at the self-service pumps yesterday and was expected to drop further today.

Gasoline prices at Baltimore area service stations have fallen by more than 5 cents a gallon in the past several weeks.A survey that revealed the same trend nationwide attributed the drop to lower winter demand and increased oil supplies.The average price for all grades of gasoline at full- and self-service stations, including taxes, was $1.2522 per gallon on Friday, according to the biweekly Lundberg Survey of more than 13,000 service stations nationwide.L The survey found the price was down 5.13 cents from Jan. 25."

For the American motorist, pulling into a gas station in Caracas, Venezuela, for a fill-up would be like a flashback to the early 1960s, when cars had big fins and monster V-8 engines and turned the quarter-mile -- in a speedy 13 seconds.Gasoline in that South American country is selling for 24 cents a gallon, according to a recent survey of worldwide prices by Runzheimer International, a Rochester, Wis.-based management consultant company that specializes in transportation.Despite these seemingly unbelieveable prices, drivers in Venezuela are probably complaining.

Baltimore taxi customers will see a decrease in fares next week but cabdrivers are protesting the change because of fewer fares in the poor economy, other increasing expenses and rising gasoline prices. As of March 1, the rate will decrease by 55 cents, lowering the cost from $2.20 to $1.65 per mile. In addition, the flat rate that riders pay for trips from downtown hotels to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport will decrease from $30 to $22. Goitom Gebre-Ab and Tsegaye Yitbarek, both drivers for about two decades, said the notice about the decreased surcharge arrived on the same day as a letter announcing that their dues and insurance costs would increase by $6 per week.

The cost of gasoline hit Tammy Williams hard when she drove her pickup from Baltimore to New Hampshire last weekend to visit her son at Dartmouth College. She spent $450 filling the tank. So she was relieved to find gas near her Northeast Baltimore home yesterday for less than $3 a gallon. At the Sunoco station on York Road and Cold Spring Lane, regular gas sold for $2.79. "It's a help," said Williams, an employee at Chimes in the city, who hopes to make more trips to see her son, though she's cut out the trips she used to make to a cabin in West Virginia.

As she pumped $2.95-a-gallon gasoline into her petite Plymouth Sunfire yesterday morning in Bel Air, Kristin Bienert was daring to dream SUV dreams. Not a huge sport utility vehicle like a Tahoe or an Expedition. But in what Maryland auto dealers can only hope is a leading indicator, a significant drop in the cost of gas in Maryland is prompting the 27-year-old Bel Air woman to consider trading in her fuel-sipping small car for a midsized sport utility vehicle - a thought she wouldn't have entertained a few months ago when prices were flirting with $4 a gallon.

Consumer frustration over high gasoline prices has apparently been judged blind-rage-inducing enough to trot out the usual discredited solution, domestic oil drilling. President Bush recently reiterated his desire to drill just about everywhere from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Gulf of Mexico as a way to offer consumers relief at the pump. Sen. John McCain, whose energy credentials were already suspect with his earlier endorsement of a counterproductive (at least as a solution to gas prices)

Marylanders appreciate the environment, worry about global warming and love their cars. But gasoline prices approaching $4 a gallon are prompting thousands of commuters to park their first love and take buses or trains to work instead. The move to mass transportation is a smart decision and an important first step away from the wasteful use of gasoline that threatens to choke the U.S economy. This is a rare opportunity to capitalize on the public's revulsion over gas prices and convince suburbanites that mass transit is in their interest.

WASHINGTON -- Drivers beware: Today's high gasoline prices soon may look like a bargain, because they are expected to peak at $3.60 a gallon nationwide in coming months, according to a government report released yesterday. In the latest bit of bad news for cash-strapped consumers, the Energy Information Administration predicted that average gasoline prices will shoot up to $3.60 a gallon in June and average $3.54 per gallon over the summer driving period, an increase of 60 cents a gallon over last summer.

It had to happen sometime. With gasoline prices pushing $3.50 a gallon, Marylanders might actually be changing their driving habits. The next thing you know, we'll be stopping for red lights. Last week, AAA Mid-Atlantic released a survey in which more than half of its Maryland members surveyed - 54 percent - said they are driving less often because of the soaring cost of filling their tanks. As of Friday, the average cost of regular gasoline in Maryland was $3.27 a gallon - almost equaling the record set after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

From Wall Street to Main Street, investors watched global oil markets yesterday as the price of crude flirted with the $100-per-barrel milestone, raising the prospect of higher costs for everything from gasoline to groceries. Analysts say this year's steady climb has been propelled by a volatile mixture of tight world supplies, a weakening dollar and speculative trading, which many say has distorted the market and created a price bubble poised to burst. Barring a drastic reversal, forecasters say consumers can expect to see gasoline prices set a record in coming weeks, potentially taking the cost of other goods and services along for the ride.

Oil refineries across America have been troubled by a record number of fires, power failures, leaks, spills and breakdowns this year, causing dozens of them to shut down temporarily or trim production. The disruptions are helping to drive gasoline prices to highs not seen since last summer. These mechanical breakdowns have created a bottleneck in domestic energy supplies, helping to push up gasoline prices 50 cents this year, to well above $3 a gallon. A third of the country's 150 refineries have reported disruptions to their operations since the beginning of the year, a record, according to analysts.

Rising gasoline prices have been getting all the attention, but the cost of another, more-important staple is actually rising more: food. In the past year, food prices have risen 3.7 percent and are on track to increase as much as 7 percent by year's end. The current increase is more than double the 1.8 percent increase last year, according to the Consumer Price Index. Meanwhile, gasoline prices rose 2.9 percent, with only the cost of health care rising more, and then just slightly. While companies up and down the food chain see the increases, they're only beginning to pass them on to consumers.