MSNBC.com has an article that lists eight reasons why gas prices could continue climbing. Some of the reasons include ethanol production costs, tight inventories, demand, summer driving and oil futures speculation. As always Mother Nature is the wild card.
8. Mother Nature: Though it's impossible to predict just how bad this hurricane season will be, the odds are against the kind of devastating damage seen last fall in the relatively small Gulf Coast corridor that produces nearly half of U.S. gasoline supplies.
But it wouldn’t take another direct hit by a Category Five storm to sent pump prices higher. Hurricanes and severe tropical storms anywhere in the Gulf would likely interrupt shipments of crude oil to refineries as well as tanker shipments of gasoline to local market.
And any spot shortages can be counted on to produce short-term local spikes in pump prices.
Hopefully, we will not see a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico again this Summer or Fall but even the threat of another significant storm could send oil futures soaring.
