Here’s Why It’s Costing Us More At The Gas Pump This Week

I got sticker shock this morning when I pulled into my favorite gas station to fill up. The price was $3.47 per gallon. Heck, when I filled up on Saturday it was around $3.21 a gallon. Before that, I think it was $3.05 a gallon. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of marathon driving the past few weeks, so I wanted to see, why did gas prices jump?

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The culprit, high oil prices. AAA gas prices say, "Despite another week of lackluster demand for gasoline, pump prices rose three cents since last Thursday to $3.58. The primary culprit is a higher oil price, which has recently increased to the mid-$70s per barrel."

What's odd about this is that demand for gasoline, in the words of AAA gas prices, is lackluster. It's not like it's around a holiday where prices spike. Or even around the spring or fall where they tweak the gasoline formulas and that usually makes gas prices rise temporarily.

The good news is, even though prices, where I buy my gas, have dramatically increased over the last week or so, Missouri as a whole hasn't landed on AAA Gas Prices list of the most expensive gasoline markets or their list of the top 10 states that have seen the largest gasoline price increases, which I guess is a good thing.

We're still paying less than the national average for gasoline as well, as of July 26, 2023, that's $3.67 a gallon. As far as the Missouri average for gasoline goes, I paid over the state's average price of $3.39 a gallon by about eight cents.

I did take a look at Gas Buddy to see if I could see if gas prices generally had jumped in the Warrensburg and Sedalia area, however, many of the pieces listed on the site hadn't been updated since yesterday and were around $3.20. That said, of those gas stations that had been updated today, prices seemed to be ranging between $3.39 -$3.49 a gallon. Although there was one Sedalia station that had gas still priced at $3.20 a gallon this morning.

The bottom line, the more a barrel of oil costs, the more a gallon of gas costs. Right now, that means more pain at the pump for us.