Between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, the fuel prices at some area gas stations dropped a couple of cents.
This might be a bit of good news to area motorists, but it doesn’t come close to making up the amount gas prices have increased since the beginning of 2009.
On Dec. 26, gas prices in the Upstate of South Carolina averaged $1.45 as they continued a downward path that began late September, when statewide prices averaged just more than $4 a gallon.
But on Thursday, the average price for the South Carolina Upstate � which includes the Greenville, Anderson, Spartanburg and Greenwood areas � was at $1.756. This is an increase from $1.75 Wednesday and $1.478 from a month ago.
Gas prices climbing by nearly 30 cents in a month has been caused by several factors, according to motor club AAA, including gasoline refiners cutting back on their output, a potential United Steel Workers Union strike at one-third of the nation’s gasoline refineries and fighting in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the year.
But the motor club said in a news release that the biggest influence on fuel prices has been the sluggish economy, which has caused less of a demand for gas.
AAA points to data from the Energy Information Administration, which indicates gas demand is 5 percent below where it was this time a year ago. This follows a year where the demand for gas was 3 percent lower than 2007.
The group also said demand could continue to decline with current economic conditions. And area residents seemed to agree.
“There’s no way people are buying as much gas. For one, they can’t afford to,” Donna Simpson said while fueling her car at a Greenwood gas station. “People, right now, don’t know how the economy is going to go. So, I don’t think they are wanting to spend a bunch of money on things like gas when they don’t know how everything is going to go.”
Jason Bailey, of Greenwood, also thinks people weren’t using as much gas because of the economy, and said it could have some long-range effects.
“If gas continues to go up, more people probably will watch how much they use,” he said. “Last summer, you kept hearing about people not going far on vacation because they couldn’t afford to pay that much for gas.
“Here we are, a few months from summertime, and gas is going back up. Times are tough, and higher gas prices on top of it, I bet we’ll be hearing about people not traveling much this summer, too.”
John Wright said he thought gas prices falling might be what will stimulate the economy.
“For a little while, prices for everything except gas have been going up,” he said. “It was nice to have one thing that was going down. Now though, it’s going up, too. It’s going to be hard to get of this messy economy if no one helps us out with prices. We can’t have all (prices) going up.”
Still, Teressa Holmes, of Greenwood, wondered if prices would be coming down anytime soon.
“Before the election, all the politicians were campaigning on how they were going to lower gas prices,” she said. “And prices went down, but now here they are, going up again. Are they going to keep going up or start going back down? Do they still care about the prices now that the election is over?”
Politicians and consumer advocates have recently raised questions as to why pump prices are continuing to rise, while the price of crude oil per barrel continues to fall. The low demand and supplies have been the reasons most major oil companies have given for the price increases.
According to AAA, February could be a crucial month for gas prices, as the industry on the West Coast needs to begin working hard to deplete its inventory of winter fuels and start preparing for the introduction of warm weather blends.
Under normal circumstances, AAA says this should have consumers seeing relief on prices during March, April and May. But the group says this year “is anything but normal,” so relief on prices is not a guarantee.
However, prices in South Carolina were still below the national average of $1.907 on Thursday. The state’s average is $1.778 per gallon, which is the seventh lowest nationally.
Only Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming had lower averages.
