Its starting to get painful at the pump.
News Radio 1200 WOAI reports the average price of gas in San Antonio today is now at its highest level since Labor Day of 2015.The average price in the city, $2.41 a gallon, is more than thirty cents a gallon more than what we were paying just three months ago.
"We saw a nine cent hike in San Antonio over the past week," AAA Texas spokesman Daniel Armbruster said. "The average now at $2.41, no longer the lowest average in the state of Texas. San Antonio had that ranking for several weeks in a row."
Armbruster says there are several factors combining to push of gas prices
."Increasing oil prices, nervousness about the tensions in Syria, record demand for the month of April."
OPEC has also been so successful in limiting the production of oil that oversupplies of crude in storage, which had acted as a block on rising gas prices regardless of demand, have vanished.
The country with the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela, is also paralyzed by government incompetence, and is essentially producing no oil, helping OPEC achieve its goals.
In fact, Saudi Arabia is reportedly telling other oil producers that if they stick together and are not lured by the attraction of higher prices to cheat on their goals, a price of $100 a barrel, thought unthinkable just two years ago, could be reachable.
For most OPEC nations, selling oil on the world market is their only source of income.So what happened to Texas shale crude, which terrified OPEC so much in the fall of 2014 that they were willing to crash the market in an attempt to drive shale out of the market?
Texas shale production has in fact picked up, and in March hit a record 3.05 million barrels per day.
Higher prices will mean more Texas shale production, but a lack of investment during the years when oil prices were setting new lows is hampering the ability of shale fields to quickly ramp up to meet the opportunities being presented by higher global crude prices.