NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON — As of Thursday, Reno County was one of the final places in Kansas where you could still get gas for under $3 a gallon, and that is likely to not continue for long.
"We've started to see gas prices again on the rise, fueled by a couple of things," said Shawn Steward with AAA Kansas. "First of all is robust demand. Demand seems to be rebounding, as is typical. This time of the year, we start seeing more people out driving as the weather improves, but then there's also an unexpected event that happened in the last few days that caused crude oil prices to rise. On Sunday, OPEC and other major oil producers, including Russia, known as OPEC+, announced a voluntary agreement to slash their output by just over 1 million barrels per day, through the end of 2023."
"We've seen oil prices rise about $6 a barrel from where we were a week ago, popping over the $80 mark," Steward said. "That's part of the ongoing equation. Oil prices directly impact the prices we see in gasoline at the pumps."
Over half of the price of a gallon of gas is set by the price of the oil it was made from.
"Traditionally, this is a more high demand season that we're starting to head into," Steward said. " With higher demand, typically, the prices do rise. The summer blend gasoline is coming into the system, which is a little bit more expensive, so adds a few additional cents to the gas price."
The one thing that could lower pump prices is if worldwide demand remains sluggish due to fears of a potential recession.