While filling up your tank this week, you may have felt the squeeze on your wallet.
Rick Lyons, a Coopersburg resident, was filling up his car at the Shell on Cedar Crest Boulevard Friday afternoon.
“It’s up a lot,” he said. “Significantly.”
Regular gas at that particular Shell on Friday sold for $3.49 per gallon.
“I mean just last week when we were here,” Lyons said, “just for regular it was maybe like $3.05.”
Driving along Cedar Crest Boulevard, 69 News saw higher-than-normal prices all around.
Both the Sunoco and the Wawa on that road were selling regular gas at $3.79 per gallon.
“I’m basically spending twice more than usual,” Kevyn Kab, from Macungie, said.
On Monday, 69 News anchor Rick Holmes first reported on rising gas prices at another Wawa in Coopersburg. At the time the prices were up from $3.11 on Sunday to $3.25 on Monday. On Friday, regular gas sold there for $3.39.
This is happening all over the country right now. The national average gas price jumped $0.34 from $2.98 one week ago, to $3.32 on Friday, according to AAA.
The Associated Press reports crude oil prices are at their highest levels since the fall of 2023.
Gas prices have been on the rise since the U.S. and Israel first struck Iran on Saturday.
“If this continues longer it will wreck chaos not just into the energy industry but also the associated industries with them,” Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a nonresident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told CNN on Friday.
Even so, two Pennsylvania lawmakers, State Reps. Joe Ciresi and Jim Haddock, argue the gas prices surged within hours of those first strikes: too quickly for it to yet be a supply and demand issue, they say.
“What I do know is you already bought the gas that’s in the ground,” Ciresi, a Democrat based in Montgomery County, said. “So you can’t justify it by saying it’s going to cost us more. That gas is bought. It’s over.”
In fact, while gas prices have risen at many stations over the past few days, 69 News also found some stations standing their ground, like Royal Fuel, on Cedar Crest Boulevard. There, regular gas as of Friday still sold for $3.09.
The new owner, Goldy Singh, tells 69 News that stations like his still have enough fuel in the ground for another few days. Though, he adds, once they need to restock, even his prices may have to go up at that time.
“This is not political,” Ciresi said. “This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans or Independents. Every one of us has seen it.”
The representatives are now calling for Pennsylvania’s Attorney General to investigate price gouging.
The lawmakers also want to push for new laws to address price gouging and consumer protection.
“If it is gouging, price gouging, is it illegal? Is it unethical? Call them out,” Ciresi said. “Enough is enough.”
But for now, some people paying more at the pump are adjusting their activities, until prices go back down again.
“Now I’m like straight to the gym, straight over there,” Kab said. “Back home.”
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