Summer Blends To Boost Prices At The Pump, But How High?
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Around May last year, gas prices jumped as the summer blends hit the pumps.
Now this year's bump is on the way.
"No, I don't think that we're going back to the $3.95s at this point," said Dan Bowers with Superior Petroleum. "And I don't think that when RVP season comes in to effect that we're going to go anywhere near that."
But the price of gas is expected to climb – and soon. GasBuddy.com says in Pittsburgh we're headed for as much as a 20-cent hit, as summer gas arrives this month.
Many local drivers say it's just what you have to pay.
"You gotta get from here to there, you gotta drive," said one driver.
But it was just a year ago that Harrisburg voted to do away with the summer gas blend.
"That was OK, here we're going to fix this problem and it all got voted through and everything's hunky dory -- except for the fix and the fix hasn't happened and it's not going to happen for a while, if ever," said Bowers.
The catch is that to do away with summer blend gas, the DEP has to come up with a cut in other emissions to make up the difference and then sell it to the EPA. And there's real concern all this could impact Landing, the cracker plant in Beaver County. So the Limbo continues at a minimum for another year.
So how high will gas prices climb?
"I think with the amount of crude and the amount of refined product and the amount of crude that are on the market right now, that there's very little chance of us going above $3 a gallon for a long time," said Bowers.
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