By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON— Shawn Steward with AAA Kansas is optimistic that gas prices are stabilizing at the moment.
"For the time being, it seems like we may have reached the peak price," Steward said. "Right now, in Kansas, we're at $3.35 a gallon. That's down six cents from a week ago. We saw some upward pressure, but less than a month following the announcement of OPEC+ production cuts, crude oil prices have dropped back to where they were before. There's still some global demand concerns, and those seem to be tempering the trend of crude oil price increases that initially followed the news of that OPEC production cut, but then again, in the United States, we're still seeing strong and even increasing demand."
"It really just goes to show you that it's a global perspective, with regard to what those crude oil prices come in at and how that impacts what we see here at the pump locally," Steward said.
It's not that there won't continue to be upward pressure as families prepare to go on their summer vacations.
"Demand is strong," Steward said. "This is our seasonal high demand period, as we're less than a month from Memorial Day. Lots of summer road trips for people. Demand will be strong for gasoline throughout the summer, It typically always has been, but right now, there's just a lot of things going on, on a global perspective, that are keeping crude oil prices relatively calm."
Crude oil makes up a little more than half of the base price of any given gallon of gasoline in the United States.