For the second consecutive day, the price of U.S. regular gasoline hit an all-time high, the American Automobile Association said on Wednesday.
The average price for regular gas hit $1.74 a gallon, up two-tenths of a cent from the prior record reported just Tuesday by the AAA. The high before that had been set late last summer, the traditional season of high demand for the motor fuel.
Earlier this week, the U.S. government predicted prices would average a record $1.83 per gallon in April and May, even before the summer driving season when gasoline demand is at its highest.
AAA is the largest motorist and travel group in the United States and commissions a daily survey of more than 60,000 gasoline stations.
President Bush on Wednesday said he was concerned with the high prices, but will not stop filling the nation’s crude oil stockpile, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
“Like most Americans, the president is concerned about rising gas prices,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
“We need to make sure we have the necessary supplies,” McClellan said when asked if Bush would stem filling the SPR, which is held in underground salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas.
SPR policies, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham reiterated Tuesday, should only be changed during national emergencies in which normal crude supply is disrupted, such as when the reserve was established in the mid-1970s after the Arab oil embargo.
Abraham also said he believes the impact on gasoline prices would be “nearly negligible” if the SPR deliveries were delayed or the SPR supply was tapped.
Later today, three Democratic senators will urge the White House to suspend shipments to the strategic reserve, which they say is contributing to the record-setting gasoline price rise.
The Senate on March 11 passed by 52-43 a nonbinding amendment that would halt 53 million barrels in crude purchases for the stockpile. Bush wants to increase the reserve to 700 million barrels from its current 650 million barrels.
And on Monday, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers also asked for a suspension of shipments to the SPR, which mainly takes in foreign crude. A letter sent to the Bush administration asked that the SPR deliveries be halted until prices fall.
Oil producer group OPEC, which controls roughly half of the world’s exported crude, is also mulling a new reduction in supplies starting April 1, adding to a series of cuts that recently brought oil prices to nearly $40 a barrel.
U.S. Energy Information Administration chief Guy Caruso said at an oil industry meeting in San Antonio on Monday that he was “really concerned” about thin U.S. gasoline inventories, which are running about 13 million barrels lower than the agency had projected.
This week the AAA said in a press release that state and federal government officials need to take another look at policies that have resulted in more than 15 different varieties of gasoline being used across the United States each summer.
“While these ’boutique’ fuels have helped clean the air, they also have seriously hampered the efficient production and distribution of gasoline,” AAA said.
The motorist and travel group has about 47 million members.
The highest prices in the nation were recorded in California for self-serve regular gasoline, the AAA said on Wednesday, at $2.14 a gallon.
The lowest average was recorded in Georgia and South Carolina, at $1.61 a gallon, the AAA reported.
While an all-time high in nominal terms, the current price of gasoline is still significantly lower than the inflation-adjusted peak of $2.94 hit in 1981, and well below the prices seen regularly in European countries.
