AAA Says Gas Prices Might Keep Rising Because of Harvey

Gas prices have jumped in recent days, and Hurricane Harvey could bring another jump at the pump.

Columbia, SC (WOLO)– Gas prices have jumped in recent days, and Hurricane Harvey could bring another jump at the pump.

“It’s definitely not fun to see when it rises,” Ryan Daniels said. 

AAA says South Carolina is seeing one of the largest increases in gas prices in the country from Tuesday to Wednesday, but the uptick is only by about 5 cents.

“Harvey could cause some issues at the gas pumps, just because depending on what’s going on out there with the refineries in Texas. If they’re having any kind of issues delivering, they can’t get their trucks out because flooded roads are getting in the way and making it difficult for them or worse case scenario if they needed to shut down one of them,” Ernie King said, the general manager of the Columbia AAA. 

According to AAA, South Carolina’s gas average is $2.186. That’s significantly lower than the national average, of $2.404.

People in the Midlands still think the jump is a little steep.

“I think they’re kind of getting a little high. I think it’s probably because of what happened in Texas. But I’m hoping they start going down because it’s a little bit of a strain on people’s pockets,” Shaquille Tanner said, an Uber driver. 

A week ago gas was only $2.058 cents but AAA said it is hard to predict if the prices will continue to go up. Especially with labor day weekend around the corner, when they say prices usually dip down.

“The storm issue couldn’t have happened at a worse time because normally right around now the prices tend to go down. Still a little bit hard to tell whether or not they’re going to keep going up just because so far we haven’t heard anything about issues with delivery. So as long as they’re still able to get the trucks out we should be in pretty good shape,” King said. 

Some Midlands residents aren’t bothered by the increase.

“It doesn’t bother me too much. You know if it went up a dollar, yeah, but I don’t really mind,” Matthew Sinisgally said. 

Some are staying positive.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll get better over the next couple weeks, I’m pretty sure it will,” Tanner said. 

“Fill it up as you normally do, don’t panic. Hopefully, this will be a really short thing and the prices won’t go up too much,” King said.