- Ryan Dunn contributed to this report
COLUMBUS - Retail gasoline prices rose again overnight and are now up nearly 40 percent from the start of the year, while the price for crude yesterday topped $60 a barrel for the first time since early November.
Just a week ago, drivers nationally paid about 17 cents less for a gallon of gas on average.
Athens prices have continued to rise as well. Both BPs, 50 N. Court St., and 1 E. Stimson Ave., and both Speedways, 319 E. State St. and 414 Richland Ave., charge $2.39 for a gallon of 87 regular unleaded gasoline. The average cost in south central Ohio is $2.31.
Crude closed at $58.85 a barrel yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's more than 80 percent above prices in December when crude was bottoming out.
Prices at the pump rose 2.2 cents to $2.248 a gallon overnight, according to motor club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. While the cost for a gallon has risen less than a quarter in the past month, 16.9 cents of that increase has occurred in the last week.
Prices are rising faster this week than they did last year, when gasoline embarked on a record run toward $4.11.
No one is expecting a repeat of last summer, however, and many think prices have only about another nickel to go before topping out.
This is the time of year, as the country gears up for Memorial Day, that prices tend to begin an upward climb.
What's different this year is the amount of crude, and gasoline, that is now in storage. The country has not seen storage levels this high since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
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Mark Williams
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Both Athens BPs, 50 N. Court St., and 1 E. Stimson Ave., and both Speedways 319 E. State St. and 414 Richland Ave., charge $2.39 for a gallon of 87 regular unleaded gasoline.
