he was following rob portman and the senator left a little card on his seat that said, hey, too bad you fell asleep, i was going to tell you whatever you wanted. he may not be quite as vanilla as we are led to believe. heather: you snooze you lose. thank you for joining us. bye. rick: you may have noticed the pain at the gas pump is getting worse. for one group of drivers it s posing a major problem. the average price of a gallon of gas is $3.67. that is up from $3.38 a month ago. the price for a gallon of diesel is a whooping $3.88. that means big trouble for truck drivers whose deliveries keep our economy running on all sin eve cylinders. doug mckelway has more. we had peace of mind about gasoline prices andes he will prices earlier this summer. you recall last spring prices
but what is more significant at least in my view is that home heating oil prices are right now sort of in limbo because demand for heating oil because of our warmer winter is really declining. so the refiners are caught in sort of, you know, a situation where they re watching their margins drop, they re watching their top line drop, and as a result they re trying to hold prices higher, in some case move prices higher, for gasoline to offset what they re losing with home heating oil. now, the reality is that iran s not helping in any way, but what we re watching here is a little more complicated than just iran. alisyn: okay, that s interesting. so is there any way to predict what this means for spring prices or summer prices? the likelihood, as you said, it will mean higher prices. to what degree we don t know because basic supplies are still running high. our inventories of crude oil are still running high, and the
terror threat alert system. you are the complete correspondent. thank you so much. reporter: thank you. and gasoline prices are only going in one direction. the price for a gallon of regular now averaging $3.84, up 29 cents since last month, nearly a dollar higher than this time last year and higher in some semis likes our. john hofmeister is the founder of citizens for affordable energy and the former president and ceo of shell oil, a great friend to this program. thank you for coming back. john, good to see you. let s talk about oil and, of course, we re paying tribute to the anniversary of the oil spill. and gas prices, why are gas prices going up? i know it happens every season, but this is prememorial day, haven t done the switchover yet here. andrea, it is truly unprecedented what kind of spring prices we re experiencing. and i really give it three reasons. number one, the u.s. continues not to want to produce its own