Pumpin' The Gas Price

by pessimist

Now that summer has officially begun, thoughts turn to vacation trips - or not:

The average U.S. retail gasoline price jumped 2.5 cents in the last week to $2.89 a gallon, ending two straight weeks of falling pump costs enjoyed by motorists, the government said Monday.

The rise left motorists paying 78 cents a gallon more for regular gasoline than they did a year ago, the federal Energy Information Administration said in its weekly survey of service stations. The Energy Department's forecasting arm previously said it thought consumers would pay an average $2.71 a gallon at the pump this summer, 34 cents more than last year.

The bankers are betting that this is going to get worse:

Forecasts for an active Atlantic hurricane season have CIBC World Markets (CIBC World Markets is the wholesale banking arm of CIBC, the major Canadian bank) predicting gasoline prices could soar this summer to $1.30 a litre, or $3.50 US per U.S. gallon.

In The Land Down Under, they don't get hit by hurricanes (at least not very often). But if they did, think of what they would be paying considering this relatively normal price:

Petrol prices have jumped to up to $1.60 a litre [1 liter = 0.264172051 US gallons, and the Australian Dollar = US$0.742997 (June 9, 2006), so that's about $4.50/gal.]

[Fair Use Notice filling the flip tank]

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