Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Prices at the pump are increasing all over the country, and that is no different in the Levittown area.
The average price of a gallon of gas in Levittown was $3.02 on Friday.
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AAA Mid-Atlantic reported the average gas price in the five-county Philadelphia area was $3.06, an increase of 8 cents since last week.
The national gas price average was $2.88 as of Friday, up 5 cents over the last week.
Experts at GasBuddy, a travel and navigation service, said gas prices have trended upward for the past 10 weeks. They said the price increases are being caused by growing levels of travel after a year of suppressed commuting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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According to GasBuddy data, last week’s gasoline demand across the country was just 1 percent below the pre-pandemic level.
Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, said the increasing demand for gas is an “an extremely bullish factor likely to continue driving gas and oil prices up in the short term.”
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“The recovery in the last few weeks has been astounding- both the speed and overall volume increases we’ve seen in our data lend credibility to the recovery, and perhaps will lead to continued price increases due to the continued imbalance between supply and demand. It’s no longer a question of if we’ll see gasoline demand return to near normal this year but when, and will oil producers rise to the occasion and be able to quickly ramp up output, or are we going to see the highest summer prices since 2014 until they jump into action? Only time will tell, but it’s looking like things are heating up far more than expected since the start of the year,” he said.
De Haan explained pandemic recovery is influencing commodities across the board, but he suggested that new COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns in Europe might slow recent demand increases worldwide.
Last week, data from the Energy Information Administration indicated that more American refineries were able to expand output after extremely cold weather and damaging storms in the south. Refinery utilization in the south went from 13 percent to 69 percent last week, but it was still below pre-Texas cold levels.
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AAA national Spokesperson Jeanette McGee said: “With increased demand and tighter gasoline supplies, we are looking at more expensive pump prices with little relief in the weeks ahead.”
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