Gallon of Regular Gasoline Currently Costs $3.68

Will gasoline prices start to taper off as the summer stretches on, as has happened in most previous summers?

According to AAA, don't count on it.

The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline will currently run you $3.682, which is just off of this year's peak of $3.70/gallon.

Analysts were originally estimating that gasoline costs would start tapering off in the summer, but the highly unstable situation in Iraq has added a "fear premium" to global oil and gasoline prices. Iraq has devolved into violence and fear over the past couple of months, and many fear that an outright civil war is soon to break out. The worse the situation in Iraq gets, the higher oil prices (and gasoline prices) will move.

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The last time that gasoline prices continued to climb into the summer was 2008. Intense demand from China helped to push the cost of a barrel of oil to almost $150, which resulted in gasoline prices being pushed to over $4/gallon throughout the country.

This fact has some people fretting, as we all know what happened in the fall of 2008.

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According to Gasbuddy.com, South Carolina currently has the cheapest gasoline in the nation at $3.393/gallon, while Hawaii was the most expensive at $4.351/gallon.

Three states (California, Alaska and Hawaii) currently have average gasoline prices of over $4/gallon.

Source: Gasbuddy.com

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