The national average for gas prices sits at $3.69, a three-month high. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Ines Ferre takes a look at the geopolitical and weather-related pressures that are pushing fuel prices higher.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: All right, let's also take a look at the price at the pump because pain at the pump. Gas prices are on the rise once again. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline climbing to a three-month high, a $3.69 on Wednesday. That's according to the latest data there from AAA. Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre is taking a closer look at what we're seeing. Ines.
INES FERRE: Yeah, Seana. And these higher prices are coming at a bad time when commodity prices are also higher, agricultural commodities like wheat, for example. And this isn't great for the inflation fight, because we know that consumers are already stretched with their dollars. Also when the price of energy just goes up, in general, other things go up as well.
So as you mentioned, that national average for gasoline, that's a three-month high. Now, over the last-- since Tuesday, it has gone up $0.05 to $3.69. Diesel also is higher at $3.92 a gallon. Last week, it was at $3.86. You're looking at the Wi-Fi interactive board, so you're seeing gasoline futures that are up.
Now what is driving these higher fuel prices? Well, the mounting supply cuts from OPEC and Russia. You've got also some refineries that have not been working because of extreme heat. So just to give you an idea, if you put a refinery offline for about 20 minutes, that can delay days of supplies when it comes to gasoline.
Also gasoline inventories, those are already low. But just to put this in perspective, look, last year, you had gasoline averages at $0.64 higher than what they're at today. You had that peak last year of gasoline peaking $5 a gallon.
And as far as the agricultural prices are concerned, well, we have seen the commodities going higher because of Russia ending a crucial deal with Ukraine that allowed Ukraine to export wheat. So that has lifted up the price of some agricultural items.
And also, guys, there is an unknown, and that is the hurricane season. We are officially in the hurricane season. It gets more active at the end of the summer, beginning of the fall. So we'll have to see what happens there and how that impacts gasoline prices.
SEANA SMITH: Hey, Ines, putting you on the spot just a bit, but how has that typically impacted the price of gasoline? Obviously, I mean, just in terms of if we did see some sort of disruption from these storms, how big of an uptick could we see in prices potentially?
INES FERRE: Well, you could see them go higher, because, look, the refineries, I mean, if you hit refineries, if refineries have to go offline, that's significant. And that would impact days of supplies for gasoline. So we've seen that before. We've seen these spikes going higher when we have had hurricanes. And we could see that again for sure.
SEANA SMITH: Certainly something that we will continue to watch. All right, Ines Ferr thanks.
