We’re not yet seeing $4 a gallon gas (except in Hawaii and parts of California), but most Americans now figure they'll be pumping $5 gas before much longer.
A new poll by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. found that 78 percent of Americans think gasoline will rise to $5 a gallon during 2008.
Even more Americans — 94 percent of respondents — said that $4 gas was a done deal this year.
Gasoline now costs $3.62 a gallon reports oil analyst Trilby Lundberg, while the barrel price this week shattered $120 after a slight fallback a few days earlier.
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The American Automobile Association reported regular gasoline prices at the same level, up from $2.97 last year on May 1.
Compare that with 1981, when gasoline soared to a record $1.35 a gallon. Adjusted for inflation, that previous record high would be $3.17 in 2008 dollars — a figure in our rear-view mirror and receding fast.
Lundberg’s survey of 7,000 gas stations across the country found prices rising as refiners and retailers took advantage of high crude, and less so due to high barrel prices.
Lundberg told Bloomberg that it would take another 25 cents or 50 cents per gallon, however, to get refiners to bring on extra refining capacity.
At the end of 2007, less than a third of Americans thought $5 gas was a realistic risk, according to CNN’s poll.
That poll result now seems quaint.
"We'll see a national average of $4, $4.10, $4.20 and maybe even $4.30," predicted Stephen Schork, editor of energy industry newsletter The Schork Report.
Schork added that $5 gas was indeed possible in certain parts of the country as early as the end of spring.
© NewsMax 2008. All rights reserved.
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