NEW ORLEANS — The cost of fuel is surging in Louisiana and across the country.
If you’re looking for cheap gas in the New Orleans area, good luck.
“Two days ago, I paid like $3.80 a gallon, today’s it’s like $4.19 and then now it's $4.29,” driver Alesia Roman said. “So, it seems like it’s going up by the hour, actually.”
Wednesday, the price at most gas stations was north of four dollars.
“I’m trying not to focus on that and stress out on it, but every time I drive by and see that sign creeping up it’s not comforting, that’s for sure,” driver Ren Richardson said.
Even the experts can’t predict where the price will go.
"It’s a hard one to speculate,” said Professor Pierre Conner director of the Tulane Energy Institute. “I don’t want to be out there saying we’ll see six. But I certainly think that we can envision something with a 5 in front of it.”
According to Conner, every $10 a barrel increase in the price of crude oil, shows up as 25 cents a gallon increase in the price at the pump.
“On Monday, crude oil was $110 and then now we’re at $120 today, so that’s ten dollars,” Conner said. “There’s a 25-cent increase probably coming in a gallon of gasoline, shortly.”
Russia's invasion of Ukraine remains a large factor behind the surge in oil prices.
Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA) President Mike Moncla says higher costs aren’t good for the consumer or the industry.
“It’s a commodity,” Moncla said. “Refineries have to buy oil on the open market and if they’re buying it higher at the open market, they’re going to have to refine it and it’s going to come out a more expensive product.”
With fuel costs now skyrocketing to unaffordable levels for many families, experts predict that the U.S. oil and gas industry will respond with increased domestic production.
“Commodity prices being higher, there’s more rig work going on the production side, trying to get wells back flowing,” Moncla said.
“I do believe a bit longer term, as you move into say the end of the year, next year, we’ll see a response,” Conner said. “We’ll see increased production in the United States. We’ll try to figure at ways to get more crude oil into this country into our refining complex and I think then you’ll see a leveling out.”
According to AAA, Wednesday the average price of a gallon of regular in Louisiana was $4.03 a gallon.
That’s about a 10 cent jump just overnight.
“I could definitely see down the road, riding my bike a little more,” Richardson said.
Just a year ago, a gallon of regular gas cost around $2.50 cents a gallon in the Bayou State.