While the gas lines that were common around San Antonio last weekend have all but vanished, and more stations are being supplied with gasoline at their pre Hurricane Harvey levels, it will take a lot longer to get gas prices down to where they were before Harvey, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The day before Harvey formed in the Gulf of Mexico, San Antonio’s average price for gasoline was $2.15, and that was actually up from the $2.05 we were paying one month ago today.
Today, the average in San Antonio is $2.57, and it is not unusual for stations to be posting prices of $2.79 to $2.89. Even the occasional price over $3.00 a gallon has been seen around the city.
Patrick DeHaan, senior analyst for GasBuddy.com, tells News Radio 1200 WOAI it will take a while for those prices to come down, but they will come down.
“I think if this is it, if there are no major hurricanes that affect refineries or oil production, we could be talking about sub $2 a gallon gas before the end of the year,” he said.
Analysts say due to the largely consumer panic driven gas lines and station shortages, stations had to seek out new supplies, and bring in gas from different, and usually farther off places, and that required additional costs in manpower and transportation.
DeHaan says the good news today is that, unlike Harvey, which affected more than a quarter of the nation’s refining capacity, Hurricane Irma does not appear to be a threat to oil resources.
“The storm is not taking aim at the corridor from the Mississippi River to Corpus Christi,” he said. “That is home to much of the nations offshore production, and refining.”
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