Regional gas prices jumped by more than a dime over the past week, but they may be on the downswing as early as late this week.
Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com, said Tuesday the North Dakota average price of 1 gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $2.53, an increase of 14 cents from the previous week. The national average was up 24 cents per gallon, he said.
"We did see a pretty hefty increase in North Dakota, but it's quite under the national average, so it certainly could be worse. And yes, it's all to blame on Hurricane Harvey," DeHaan said. "There's been a lot of change to what you'd call the normal flow of gasoline. The refineries in the Midwest have been sending gasoline down to the Gulf Coast, and that's what's putting pressure on prices here."
Diesel prices were not affected nearly as much, DeHaan said. The state average for diesel fuel was up just 7 cents at $2.58.
GasBuddy.com reported the average price for regular unleaded gas in Grand Forks and Devils Lake on Tuesday was $2.49 a gallon. In Fargo, prices ranged from $2.29 to $2.39, and in Crookston, prices ranged from $2.45 to $2.52.
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"The biggest increases are likely behind us. We have seen the pace of increases at the pump greatly slow down," DeHaan said. "And I would say it's possible that either toward the weekend or early next week, we could see the prices begin to slowly drift back down."
DeHaan said he did not expect the looming Hurricane Irma to have much effect on local gas prices even if the storm strikes land in Florida.
"Typically, gas prices react when a hurricane threatens or shuts down production in the Gulf of Mexico-anywhere from New Orleans to Corpus Christi (Texas)-where you have a lot of refining infrastructure, offshore oil rigs," he said. "Florida has no refineries. There's not even a whole lot of oil or gasoline infrastructure. ... And for that reason gas prices would not see a major national increase as they did for Harvey. Florida could see higher prices and the areas that may be affected could ultimately have higher prices, but nothing of the magnitude we saw for Harvey."
