According to AAA's Fuel Price Finder, gas one year ago today was $2.77/gallon. Their website has this handy dandy little ticker at the top with averages:
Area Average : $3.141
Last Week: $3.544 Last Month: $4.083 6 Months Ago: $3.463 Last Year: $2.779
Average Cost To Fuel A Vehicle With a 15 Gallon Tank: $47.11Last Week: $53.17 Last Month: $61.24 6 Months Ago: $51.94 Last Year: $41.69
Now, today, gas for $2.77 sounds pretty sweet. In the past year, we've gotten accostomed to gas prices being in the $3something range, and recently, $3.99/gal was a deal. Oil barrel costs had gone through the roof, affecting our consumer cost.
Enter Hurricane Ike on 9/13, and welcome the 2008 gas crisis. North Carolina is one of those oh-so lucky places to only be serviced by 2 pipelines (Colonial and Plantation) coming from the coast, and when they're pummelled by a hurricane, supplies are diminished. The highest I paid for a gallon was $4.04, but that was pre-Ike. Thankfully in our area we were able to find a few stations with gas at $3.99. Five cents do add up, but it didn't stress me out too much.
Running out of gas did.
We just so happened to be in Myrtle Beach for a long weekend when Ike hit and the crisis began. The pictures were insane coming from stations all over the Southeast, primarily Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. People lined up for hours, fights ensued, and it was chaos. We found gas in SC the night before we left, but the truck was sitting in our driveway empty. Slight panic ensued, but luckily C found gas on his way to work Monday morning.
Now that things have been fully restored to pre-Ike situations, we won't see any more pictures like this:
Prices are dipping down, hovering above $3/gallon, but that's a HUGE improvement over $4/gallon. We're already pretty frugal and conservative with gas usage, so it doesn't affect us too much, but it's the bigger picture that is an issue. Higher gas prices drive up the price of everything. Talk about a budget crunch...
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