WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — When gas prices sharply increased to over $4 a gallon in the last few days, the comments on WPTV's Facebook page flooded in.
Some of our Facebook followers don't mind the increase, while others say it's impacting their wallets.
Several people mentioned the $5-a-gallon spike that happened in 2022. Those prices occurred at the start of the Russian war with Ukraine and the surging demand for fuel as we came out of the pandemic.
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By the end of that year, supplies were meeting demand and prices retreated to around $3.
Now, we have the conflict in Iran and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that are pressuring oil prices.
Kenny on WPTV's Facebook page asked about diesel prices, which I found out from Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy are being impacted by Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.
"Those refinery attacks have been extremely effective in knocking offline Russia's largest refineries," De Haan said. "So much so that Russia says they can't export; they're banning the export of diesel, and that's a big problem because suddenly it leaves a big gap in diesel supplies globally, and that's why U.S. and global diesel prices are record-setting."
James in Port St. Lucie emailed WPTV asking about using oil from Texas and Alaska.
It turns out that most of the domestic oil the U.S. produces comes from Texas and offshore drilling.
"This summer refineries have operated at their highest utilization this century," De Haan said. "It's been 27 years since refineries have operated this hard over the summer; just in the last week they've operated at 98% of capacity."
And that means the U.S. is producing between 16 and 18 million barrels a day, but the price is set by a worldwide mark and supplies are stressed elsewhere.
Finally, a comment on Facebook from Charles about oil companies and their record profits: "The numbers are staggering; $125 billion in the first half of this year."
WPTV talked with Alex Fernandez, owner of West Palm Gas, about the pricing per gallon of gas.
"You have what they call the rack prices, which is what the fuel costs, then on top of that you have the taxes that each county and city have on the fuel," Fernandez told WPTV. "And then you have your penny or two that the driver is going to make for the delivery."
