GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Gas prices at some stations Grand Rapids area jumped up to nearly $4 a gallon Tuesday morning, leaving some customers concerned and frustrated.
“Well, I mean, obviously it makes it harder to do pretty much anything,” customer Alistir Smith said. “I mean, you need to go anywhere to do anything. You go to the store. I need to go to work, all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, just increases the cost of living. So, definitely don't like it.”
In addition to frustration over price, some drivers are now trying to limit their time on the road to save money.
“Well, I have to put premium in,” fellow customer Paulette said while filling up her car. “So premium is always $1 more than regular. So it's a lot of money, no matter how you look at it, you know, I try not to do some unnecessary driving, to help out and combine things rather than go out separately.”
Tuesday morning, drivers did not know about the surge until they arrived at the pump. This has some drivers like Paulette worried.
“I didn't hear anything about it, right?” she said. “I don't know. It's concerning.”
But not all the stations in the area observed such a spike.
"To an economist, that's always a puzzle," Economics Department Chair Kevin Cotter said, "because, if you see two stations close together with vastly different prices, or get your station charging higher prices, they're going to lose a lot of business, and they're going to be forced to cut their price."
Another expert told 13 ON YOUR SIDE he doesn't see the increases being long-term.
"You know, for every company that might want to go up 15 or 20 cents, you're going to get a Costco or a BJ's [Wholesale Club] or a Sam's Club where gasoline is the magic elixir to get people inside the box and they will not raise prices to the levels you see for some of the branded companies," said Tom Kloza, who works as the global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. "So, I would suggest that what you've seen there is a little bit of a whimsical move that is not likely to last unless weather plays a role."
Hurricane Beryl that swept through Texas this week, Kloza said, wasn't strong enough to cause any large disruptions to supply.
But given how critical the Gulf of Mexico is to energy, Kloza said a strong enough hurricane there that would further and more harshly impact states like Texas and Louisiana could impact the supply and lead to price spikes, given that those states account for a large portion of the country's refining power.
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