www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12400801
NEW YORK - Gas prices jumped Friday to their highest level since June, a possible preview of what many analysts believe will be a record spike in pump prices this spring. While gasoline has risen sharply in recent days in response to oil's dramatic climb to a new record above $101 a barrel, gas supplies have quietly grown to their highest level in 14 years. "We've got a major supply cushion," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill. Ritterbusch, for example, thinks the high level of supplies, and an eventual decline in oil prices, will pull pump prices down.
CNBC But Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, NJ, argues that while gasoline prices won't rise as much this spring as they have in previous years, they are starting from a much higher level. Indeed, prices at the moment are 83 cents higher than a year ago. Oil has traded in a band between about $86 and $100 a barrel for months, a trend many analysts expect to continue throughout the year. That will likely keep gas prices oscillating in their own narrow band around $3 a gallon for most of the year. Oil prices rose Friday on word Turkish troops pursued separatist Kurdish rebels into northern Iraq. Concerns that the Kurds would retaliate against Turkish attacks last fall by sabotaging oil shipments out of Iraq had much to do with oil's rise to $100, analysts said. Word that the key Houston Shipping Channel was closed to oil tankers and other ships for the second day in a row also gave oil traders reason to buy. Both contracts were being pushed higher by the winter storm pounding the Northeast. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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