JACKSON, Miss.- If you’ve been to the gas pump within the past week, you’ve already felt the strain of the recent skyrocket in gas prices. They had began to decrease down as low as $1.50 in some parts of the state, but, as to everything, there is a season; and this season brings a statewide average gas price of $2.27, as of Thursday.
Don Redman, AAA Mississippi spokesman said that a couple of weeks ago, the price of crude oil was under $50 a barrel, and it’s now well of $56 a barrel… And of course, whenever oil prices rise, so do the prices of gasoline.
“This is a news-driven industry, and a market that’s dependent on news,” Redman said Wednesday on the JT Show. “And when we start seeing war ships sailing out and a potential threat of an outbreak of war hits, not between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but between the U.S. and Iran, over Yemen.”
Redman says there are many indicators as to why it won’t jump too high, but sighted some reasons why we have seen the increase.
“We saw prices starting to dip down a little bit, as we saw potentially some sanctions would be lifted on Iran, and the global market reacted to that, because that means more oil out on the market. And now it looks as that agreement is in jeopardy, as well as, again, anytime you start having rockets and ships and everything going on in that part of the world, it makes the market very jittery, very nervous. But if you look at the other indicators, such as the Asian economy, China’s economy, it’s still continuing to shrink; when it had growth of 8 or 9 percent, and now it’s growth is about 2%. So there’s other indicators that would suggest that we wouldn’t expect those prices to jump very high. And that’s why I don’t think that you’re seeing crude soaring up to 80, 90, 100 dollars a barrel, for the fact that, if you look at the other economic factors, it’s just going to keep those prices depressed.”
