Gas prices expected to spike

Over the weekend, BP’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery plant experienced issues with its largest crude distillation unit.

RBOB gasoline in the New York Harbor was virtually unchanged from Monday at $1.6937 a gallon, but up 7 cents a gallion from Friday’s finish.

The refinery will produce around 11.5 million fewer gallons of gasoline a day if an issue with equipment is not resolved soon, said GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan.

The spike in Midwestern gasoline prices comes at a time when you’d least expect it, while crude oil is nearing a six-year low because of a bump in Iranian oil production and a devaluation of the Chinese yuan.

Decatur may be enjoying the same kind of gas price war that hit Champaign-Urbana two weeks ago, bringing it the lowest prices in the state, DeHaan said.

Nationally, the average price this morning was $2.58 a gallon. Their costs are going down so they can two things: “they can hold their prices and drop it at a far slower rate, thus keeping prices higher, or stations can quickly pas along the drops and forego any additional profits”, DeHaan said.

“We are trying to reach the point where we can not rely so heavily on foreign markets for gas and oil”, Antrican said. This is because there are fewer refineries in the U.S. than there were thirty years ago, DeHaan said.

BP U.S. has not returned requests for comment.