The average price of gasoline has passed the four-dollar-a-gallon mark in all U.S. states, reports The Washington Post, although recently in some parts of America it was thought that such prices were a problem exclusively in expensive cities.
Nationwide, the average price of gasoline has been four dollars a gallon for weeks, but in some states it has been lower. Georgia, Kansas and Oklahoma were the last states to pass that mark on Tuesday.
Severin Borenstein, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while the new prices “came as a real shock” to Americans, he was not surprised by this development.
“It’s not surprising that we’ve reached these levels, given high oil prices and strong demand amid an economic recovery,” he said.
In California on Tuesday, the average cost per gallon of gasoline was more than six dollars for the first time, CNN reported. According to JPMorgan analysts, such a price could become a reality across the country by the end of the summer.
“There is a real risk that prices will be $6+ a gallon in August,” Natasha Kaneva, head of global oil and commodities research at JPMorgan, told CNN.
Last week, the average U.S. gasoline price broke records amid inflation and volatility in the oil and gas markets, caused in part by events in Ukraine.