up, and that s due to two factors. you know, gas prices are always connected in some way to the economy and right now, we have better than expected unemployment rates. the unemployment rate drops. what does that translate to? more commuter driving and overall, more demand for energy. so you re going to see that increase in oil prices, which translate in turn to increase in gas prices. but the second factor, of course, is we re entering into the spring driving season. so traditionally, that s an increase, again, in the commuter driving during the spring season going into the summer, but also, refineries have to switch over their blends for pollution controls and when they do that switch over into blends, the summer blends, spring/summer blend is more expensive than the winter blends right now. so oil in terms of price per barrel is going how much? is it $81? sh sf. right. closed on friday about $81, which generally will translate into the prices you re seeing at
movement on a way to get more oil in the u.s. chief national correspondent jim angle looks at the reaso reasons. consumers are wincing at the gas pump. prices now increase 32 days in a row leaping 43 cents a gallon since january and 15 cents in the past week. prices rise this time of year but this year they rise faster and earlier. starting early for a couple of reasons. number one, we have the unrest in the middle east. whether it s egypt or iran. number two, we are still feeling some of the aftereffects of hurricane sandy. the east coast hasn t caught up with inventories and that has been a problem. prices are usually lower in january but in refineries shut down for maintenance and to retool to make government required summer blends of fuel with different areas of the country requiring a dozen different blends. and that puts pressure on prices. switchover itself you usually see increase of somewhere
today s national average $3.76 a gallon. maybe in your area a little higher or lower than that. it s the fastest run up we ve seen in gas prices since 2005. now our government says state and local taxes are helping to fuel these prices at the pump. elizabeth mcdonald is on this story today. liz. reporter: the argument and debate down on wall street is why are gas prices zooming so much higher? yes it s a refinery issue, yes it s a switch to summer blends, but also the u.s. government is weighing in on this. the energy information administration which is part of the department of energy put out this note. of it said essentially watch this tax move on the part of oil companies. in the month of december oil inc inch ten inventory convenient torreys dropped in the gulf coast region a tremendous amount, and why? look at this statement from the eia? they ve said u.s. oils inventories typically decline in
heretofore unavailable. john? diesel costs are up. that, i guess, could increase prices for just about everything the truckers carry, huh? indeed it does. we spoke it a lot of truckers today. keep in mind, most of the over the long haul trucks that are here have fuel tanks that contain a minimum of about 200 gallons. so you can literally see the pain on driver s faces as they re topping off their fuel trucks. this is especially true for the independent drivers who have to absorb these losses. with the fleet driver, they know they re just passing the costs along. fuel goes up, the cost of what we deliver goes up because we have to recover it. then the stores charge more. and then the customer is the the people are the ones who lose out. there is a very good chance prices may go back down at the end of the summer time driving season and as the refineries switch back to wintertime blends, which are less expensive than summer blends.
pipeline, the story has already been written on that. everybody believes he did. he made a statement i m not moving forward with this. if they want to do it tomorrow, they could. a new route is proposeddy. go through your apartment. governor of nebraska is a problem and it was a route offered by the congressional republicans in conjunction with nebraska governor. they could do it tomorrow if they wanted to. bob: our assumption that everybody in america knows about the pipeline he announces the pipeline, this story will be forgotten. greg: a republican point to hammer. big nail to hammer. eric: quickly, i know we will run out of time. i had a business of distributing gas, buying gasoline, bring it in from overseas, selling it. you know that there are reformulated gas prices and oxygennated blends, detergent regulation, specific vapor pressure blends, summer blends, east coast blends,