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This picture was taken nine years ago tomorrow in Lime Springs, near the Minnesota border. It was the first time I had ever seen super unleaded at $2 a gallon in Iowa. Then this week, this happened:<\/p>\n
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Associated Press, Jan. 11:<\/a><\/p>\n Forecasters say ample oil supplies and weak\u00a0U.S.\u00a0demand will keep a lid on prices. The lows will be lower and the highs won’t be so high compared with a year ago. …\u00a0AAA forecasts the national average will peak between $3.60 and $3.80<\/strong> in the spring, then drop to between $3.20 and $3.40 by mid-summer.<\/em><\/p>\n CNN, January 30:<\/a><\/p>\n Largely thanks to an oil and gas\u00a0production boom<\/a>\u00a0in this country, gasoline prices are expected to top out somewhere between $3.50 a gallon and $3.90 a gallon this year, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. Last year’s top price was $3.94 a gallon, set in early April.<\/em><\/p>\n Average prices for the year are expected to be lower too. Kloza is predicting an average of $3.25 to $3.50 a gallon. That’s considerably lower than\u00a0last year’s average<\/a>\u00a0of $3.60 a gallon — which caused U.S. motorists to spend a record $479 billion at the pump.<\/em><\/p>\n And because those are national estimates, here’s Radio Iowa, January 11<\/a> (“Report: Gasoline prices in Iowa should be lower in 2013 than 2012”):<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t expect the peak this year to be near $4 as we did last year, actually twice in the Midwest,\u201d Weinholzer says. \u201cWe expect the peak to be more in the $3.60 to $3.80 area, but as a whole, the national average will be below last year by about 20-cents on average throughout the year.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In May 2012, gas hovered in the $3.35-$3.50 range. The price pictured above is the third-highest I have ever seen in Iowa<\/strong>, behind only $3.949 on July 16, 2008 and $3.919 on July 4, 2008.<\/p>\n Sioux City hit $4 a gallon<\/a> and it’s worse in Minnesota<\/a>.<\/p>\n This week made it a particularly bad time<\/a> to try anything related to an increase in Iowa’s gas tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This picture was taken nine years ago tomorrow in Lime Springs, near the Minnesota border. It was the first time I had ever seen super unleaded at $2 a gallon in Iowa. Then this week, this happened: Associated Press, Jan. … Continue reading