Another week, another gas price increase

    Nebraska gas prices went up another 3.2 cents the past week, and averaged $2.78 a gallon Monday.
    That’s according to GasBuddy’s daily survey of 1,150 stations in Nebraska.
    The latest hike makes Nebraska gas prices 31.4 cents higher than a month ago and 66 cents more than a year ago.
    High and low prices in Nebraska this week, according to GasBuddy, are $2.57 and $3.24, a difference of 67 cents per gallon.  
    The national gas price average this week $2.86, which is up 33.2 cents a gallon from a month ago and 64 cents higher than this time in 2020.
    “As Americans turn optimistic on COVID-19 pandemic recovery, we’ve been seeing insatiable demand for gasoline, which continues to recover far faster than oil production,” said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy.
    Last week’s gasoline demand was just 1% below the pre-pandemic level, an extremely bullish factor likely to continue driving gas and oil prices up in the short term,” DeHaan added.
    “The recovery in the last few weeks has been astounding, and perhaps will lead to continued price increases due to the continued imbalance between supply and demand,” he said.
    “It’s no longer a question of if we’ll see gasoline demand return to near normal this year, but when,” he added.
    The question will be if oil producers can rise to the occasion and be able to quickly ramp up output, or are we going to see the highest summer prices since 2014 until they jump into action? he asked.
    He said it looks like things are heating up far more than expected since the start of the year.