$2.389

Yesterday, the gas markets responded to the expected impact of Katrina by raising the price per barrel to $71. It came back down a bit, but the impressive thing to me was that the pump price did not show any sign of the same speculation on the impact.

The news today is clogged with talking heads predicting doom, gloom and $3/gal at the pump by the end of the week. I would’ve thought that would’ve already started to happen all over the place, but maybe the oil companies are waiting to see if the President releases oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.

There are folks around here that say that once the news starts talking about the prices going up they do, and I wonder if the price hiking is beginning locally. At the St. Louis Gas Prices site, they are now showing the first report of $3.01/gal in Jerseyville (across the river from us). That would be a bad, bad trend.

The news yesterday reported that the oil prices retained sanity during this crisis. I sure hope that their sane state continues!