Gas could hit $5 a gallon in 2012, former oil exec warns

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

From an article by Bill Novak in The Capital Times:

Fueling up on New Year's Eve might be more expensive this year than ever before.

But it could seem cheap compared to what's coming by 2012, according to an industry analyst and a former president of Shell Oil.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, predicted that average national prices for regular will be between $3.25 and $3.75 a gallon this spring in an article in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

And John Hofmeister, a former Shell president, told the Platts News Service that consumers should brace for $5 a gallon gas by 2012.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.049 on Tuesday, according to AAA's daily fuel gauge report, only a few tenths of a penny away from the all-time record year-end high of $3.053 a gallon set on Dec. 31, 2007.

In Madison, prices for regular range from $2.98 to $3.12 a gallon on Tuesday, according to MadisonGasPrices.com.

Nationally, prices are 44 cents higher than a year ago.

"We will end the year with the highest prices ever for this week," Kolza told the Times, adding that there will be a break in prices this winter before they rise again in the spring.

After the year-end record in 2007, gas prices kept rising to the all-time record high of $4.11 a gallon nationally in July 2008.

AAA said the average price for regular in Wisconsin was $3.087 a gallon on Tuesday, up nine cents from a week ago.