By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
Gas prices are getting a little bit higher in Kansas, though still better than most of the country.
"Last week we saw a bit of a jump here in Kansas, up about 5 cents in the past week," said Shawn Steward with AAA Kansas. "The current average is $3.16 a gallon, but it appears that seems to have stabilized a bit because that's the same price we were at yesterday, significantly lower than the national average as usual, which is $3.53, so we're 37 cents less than the national average, and that puts us here in Kansas at 6th lowest average gas price in the nation, so overall not too bad."
Area counties are on both sides of the state average.
Reno: $3.13
McPherson: $3.06
Harvey: $3.08
Sedgwick: $3.34
Kingman: $3.22
Pratt: $3.23
Stafford: $3.23
Rice: $3.22
"We did see a bit of a jump with the holiday travel week, but also Hurricane Beryl seemed to have a slight impact on prices," Steward said. "I was looking at the prices in Texas, and they rose about 7 cents, 7 or 8 cents over the past week, and like I said, the Kansas average went up about 5 cents, so because we're relatively close to the Gulf Coast and may receive some of our fuel from that region, the impact of the hurricane on some of those production facilities may have had some sort of impact on our prices here."
Geopolitical movements appear to have slowed, though, so there isn't as much upward pressure on prices from that side.
"It doesn't appear that there seems to be much movement in terms of geopolitical issues right now and its impact on oil prices," Steward said. "Oil prices do seem to be up a little bit from the last time we talked. I think we're in the $83 a barrel range, which is a little higher than we've seen earlier in the year, but nothing too extreme that seems to be impacting those crude oil prices right now."
The Atlantic hurricane season is always worth watching when it comes to fuel prices. We'll see if any future storms come in that may make an impact in the second half of summer.