MADISON – An expert says gas prices — which rose 50 cents a gallon in February and another 30 cents in the last week — will continue to rise, but no U.S. shortages are expected.

Clay Ingram, spokesman for AAA, said the first spike in gas prices was about 30 cents a gallon between mid-January and mid-February. This was expected, just early. “We normally see prices creep upward during the spring as our demand increases. But occasionally we’ll see it a little earlier than normal.”

“Normally it’s mid-February to early March; this year was mid-January,” Ingram said. “It was a little more of a jump than we normally see.”

Ingram said the early jump was in anticipation of a really busy travel year.

The big jumps lately, Ingram said, are due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the global reaction to it. Ingram said crude oil is a globally traded commodity. A situation like that in Russia and Ukraine affects European countries, he said, which ends up having an impact on the United States and the rest of the world.

Ingram said Alabama’s average was 22 cents a gallon higher Friday than it was Thursday.

In Madison County — where prices are lower than most of the state — regular gas prices averaged $3.79 per gallon Sunday, compared to a state average that day of $3.84 and a national average of $4.01, according to AAA.

Don’t expect a respite anytime soon.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Ingram said. “There’s no way to know how high it’ll go.”
With an ongoing war, he said, normal trends don’t apply.

“It depends on how long the conflict lasts, it depends on what countries produce sanctions against Russia, what those sanctions are, and then it depends on not just U.S. demand, but worldwide demand,” Ingram said.
Ingram said we have been through rapid escalation of gas prices before, including from natural disasters. The prices increase, Ingram said, then they come back down.

“That’s what’ll happen this time. We’ll see our gas prices come back down to something a lot more tolerable, we just don’t know when,” he said. “We don’t know how long this will last. We don’t know how high these prices will go.”

One day last week crude oil was $114 a barrel, the highest it has been since March 2012, Ingram said.

Gas may cost more, but Ingram expects no supply issues in the United States.

To fight the rising cost of gas, Ingram said to use as little gas as possible, and price shop every time you put gas in your car’s tank.

“There’s a wide variety of pricing out there right now and if you’re not paying attention to the prices, you could very easily pay 40 cents a gallon more than you need to,” Ingram said.

Price shopping will not only save you money today, Ingram said, it puts downward pressure on gas prices and creates competition in the gas market.

“These gas stations will then start dropping their prices, as low as they can, in order to sell more gas,” Ingram said.
Ingram does not believe the increase in gas prices will affect people’s decision to travel for vacation. “It usually doesn’t have any impact on it at all.” Ingram said travelers just cut other expenses during their trip to pay for the extra cost of gas.