Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Maybe this is a conspiracy to get everybody to ride the bus.
Omahans who drove past ethanol gas for $3.659 a gallon on Thursday night could only shake their heads Friday when they saw the signs advertising $3.799 for ethanol and $3.899 for regular gas.
This is getting old.
Let's scroll through World-Herald archives, back to early January, and see what we find:
Jan. 8: “The price of a gallon of regular gas at many Omaha stations rose on Friday from $3.039 per gallon to $3.179.”
Feb. 8: “Nebraska's average price of $3.217 for regular unleaded fuel is among the highest in the nation.”
Feb. 22: “The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas in Nebraska was $3.249 on Tuesday. In Iowa, it was $3.214.”
Feb. 25: “Nebraska's average price for a gallon of regular gas was $3.314 on Friday.”
March 3: “A gallon of regular unleaded cost $3.459 at many stations. Gas with 10 percent ethanol was $3.359 a gallon.”
April 5: “Remember the good old days — actually, only a couple of weeks ago — when an Omahan could buy gasoline with 10 percent ethanol for $3.399 a gallon? Or even Monday, when ethanol was $3.499 a gallon? ... Ethanol was $3.659 a gallon and regular unleaded was $3.759 a gallon Tuesday morning across the city.”
And now this — an overnight price hike of 14 cents per gallon — which brings us closer to the dreaded $4 per-gallon gas that some experts have been talking about for months.
The average per-gallon price already is more than $4 in six states and the District of Columbia, AAA Nebraska's Rose White said.
Nebraska's average per-gallon price for regular gas on Friday was $3.846, slightly under the $3.848 national average, White said. Iowa's average price Friday was $3.78.
As for the conspiracy theory mentioned earlier, the executive director of Metro, Omaha's bus service, isn't taking the blame for the gas-price jump.
“If I had that much power, I wouldn't be sitting here,” Curt Simon said.
More people are taking the bus, however.
Simon said passenger numbers have risen by 5.5 percent — more than 12,700 actual riders — in the first three weeks of April compared with the same period last year. And he's expecting this latest gas price increase to boost passenger numbers even more over the next week or so.
Simon said Metro officials have been cutting expenses to deal with higher fuel prices.
“That will hopefully mean that we won't have to increase fares throughout the balance of this year, although I can't promise that,” he said.
Continuing tensions in the Middle East and northern Africa, market speculation and rising demand in China and India have helped boost prices. Oil closed at more than $112 per barrel on Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The exchange was closed Friday.
AAA's White said that based on market activity this week, and with expectations that the price will remain at current levels or go up more, Nebraskans should expect to see $3.95 a gallon gas soon.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com
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