Gas prices nudge $8 in LA as drivers form lines to fill up

Gas prices are now nudging $8-a-gallon in Los Angeles, with drivers forming lines at Costco pumps across the US to fill up ahead of potential further increases.

Snaps taken at a Mobil gas station beside on the border of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood on Wednesday afternoon displayed eye-watering prices of $7.95 for premium gas.

Regular-unleaded wasn't much cheaper, at $7.35 a gallon. The average price of a gallon of fuel has risen by 86.4 cents in Los Angeles County over the last 15 days, with California traditionally seeing the priciest gas across the entire US.

The Golden State saw huge spikes as the national average price of gas hit $4.252 on Wednesday, setting an all-time record for the second day in a row, after the US banned Russian oil over the invasion of Ukraine.

It represents an increase of 8 cents from Tuesday alone, and gas is now up 78 cents from last month and $1.45 from a year ago, according to the AAA Gas Price Index.

California continues to lead the nation with the highest average gas price of $5.573, and at some Los Angeles gas stations, regular gasoline is now nearly $7 per gallon.

Experts are now advising Americans to conserve fuel, police departments are warning drivers to be on the lookout for gasoline thieves, and across the country, discount retailers are seeing a huge scramble to fill tanks before prices rise further.

The price of regular broke $4 a gallon on Sunday for the first time in nearly 14 years and is now up nearly 50 percent from a year ago.

Patrick De Haan of consumer group GasBuddy warned Americans to conserve gas and predicted that prices would remain above $4 until November.

De Haan tweeted: 'Everyone's focused on one side of the equation for getting more oil to satisfy our waste, our inefficient driving behavior, etc. When will Americans learn to conserve? Do your part- drive efficiently, take mass transit, or don't, and prices go higher and for longer.

'My goodness people- I'm not asking people who clearly need fuel to stay home, I'm asking the those who drive to work when they COULD take an alternative to do so.'

Meanwhile, drivers across the country sought out deals at stations with price incentives or discounts, such as Kroger, Sam's Club and Costco.

At a Kroger station in Atlanta, general contractor L. W. Boyd had two fuel spigots going at the same time - pumping diesel into two giant tanks in the bed of his Ford F150 truck - fearful that already-high gasoline prices will just keep rising.

'This cuts me, but I have to keep my truck running or I don't eat,' said Boyd, 35. With diesel now at $4.39 a gallon in his area, he planned to pay well above $400 to fill the truck and the two 50-gallon tanks.

Miranda Krauss, 43, drove to Costco in Carlsbad, California, from the city of Encinitas 20 minutes away to take advantage of the bulk discounter's lower gasoline prices.

'It's gotten so bad I came all the way here for gas. I normally wouldn't come up this far,' Krauss said.

At a Phillips 66 station in Wolfforth, a town in northern Texas, Gilberto Meta, a 47-year-old maintenance worker filling up his GMC Yukon XL, let out a long sigh as he watched the dollars on the fuel gauge rise.

'I'm now spending more on gas than I am on groceries,' he said. 'My wife and I were talking last week about trading this gas guzzler in for something more efficient.'

In Huntington Beach, California, Julian Mesa earns $15 an hour cleaning offices. On Monday, he paid $92 to fill his pickup at $5.79 a gallon.

'It´s very expensive, high for people who are earning the minimum,' Mesa said. His family had already scaled back on eating out to cut their spending during the pandemic.

Prices at the pump have been rising for more than a year, and analysts expect further increases after President Joe Biden announced that the United States will ban imports of Russian oil to punish Russia more severely for invading Ukraine.

As painful as this week's prices are, they are still not the highest that Americans have paid when you consider inflation.

In today's dollars, the prior 2008 record of $4.10 a gallon would be equal to about $5.24.

Analysys say that nearly the entire rise of the last week - about 55 cents a gallon nationwide, on average - can be linked to anticipation that eventually western countries would ban Russian crude, further shrinking their already tight supplies.

'The U. S. doesn´t need Russian oil per se, but the world and particularly Europe are dependent on it,' says Tom Kloza, an analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

According to government figures, the U. S. imported 245 million barrels of oil from Russia last year, or 8 percent of all U.S. oil imports. That is less than the United States imported from Canada or Mexico but more than it took from Saudi Arabia.

Normally fuel prices rise in spring and summer, as Americans drive and fly more. Demand could also get a boost as countries continue to shed their COVID-19 restrictions.

Those trends suggest that pump prices are heading higher, with demand continuing to outstrip supply.

'It's not going to be a good summer for motorists,' De Haan says.

GasBuddy projects that gas prices will peak in May, at an average of $4.25, and that prices will remain above $4 a gallon until November.

'Americans have never seen gasoline prices this high, nor have we seen the pace of increases so fast and furious,' said De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

'That combination makes this situation all the more remarkable and intense, with crippling sanctions on Russia curbing their flow of oil, leading to the massive spike in the price of all fuels: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and more,' he added.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday defended the Biden administration amid an onslaught of Republican accusations that the president's policies led to record-high energy prices.

United States gas prices reached a record-high nationwide average of $4.25 per gallon on Wednesday, rising eight cents the day after President Joe Biden announced a ban on Russian energy imports.

Global oil and gas prices have skyrocketed since Vladimir Putin gave Moscow's forces the order to invade Ukraine on February 24.

During remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Biden commiserated with US drivers as he announced his Russian energy blockade. He admitted prices would rise further and vowed 'to do everything I can to minimize Putin’s price hike here at home.'

But Republican lawmakers claim it's the president's clean energy policies that are to blame for cutting US fossil fuel production.

'Yes, oil is an international market, but the main reason Americans are paying so much is bad domestic policies. These aren’t Putin’s price hikes. They’re President Biden’s,' House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a press conference on Wednesday.'

Psaki repeated Biden's line when asked at her daily press briefing why the White House was blaming Putin when 'we have heard the president warn for months that gas prices were rising because of the supply chain, because of post-pandemic demand?'

'If we go back to six months ago, I don't think anybody ... (Read more)

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