BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — It’s already a pain in our wallets, but the price to fill up your gas tank is not dropping anytime soon.
“I drive a Honda because it’s easy to fill up, get a good gas mileage. Now, it’s like driving a truck,” said Johnathen Wilford, a Baton Rouge resident.
Russia is one of the largest importers of natural gas and heated tension between Russia and Ukraine will continue to drive up the cost of gas.
LSU political science professor Dr. Daniel Tirone explains why this happens.
“Any decrease in supply can drive prices up at the pump,” said Tirone. “As of right now there is not much of a supply constraint, but there is a lot of uncertainty in the market on how this is going to perceive the duration we are going to see with it.”
Tirone said we haven’t seen gas prices this high since 2014.
“I think we saw prices briefly over 100 dollars a barrel which we have not seen in a long time,” he said.
GasBuddy reports the cost can go up from five to 15 cents a gallon in the next couple of weeks.
“The national average has the potential to eventually rise to four dollars a gallon,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
According to GasBuddy, as of Thursday, the average gallon price is three dollars and thirty-six cents in Baton Rouge. Tirone said the average could be much higher in the coming days.
“Before, it would cost me 25. It cost 45 dollars and 47 cents to get a full tank of gas,” said Wilford.
The soaring prices open up questions about what else can cost you more.
“When we see energy prices increase, very shortly thereafter we see the broad constellation of economic increase as well,” said Tirone.
On Thursday President Joe Biden said there is an executive plan in place to prevent higher prices.
