Gas prices creeping toward $3-a-gallon mark

Gas prices around Asheville are flirting very near the $3-a-gallon mark. Keep your eye on them. A recent Greenville News story quotes sources as saying the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has little to do with the increase:

Gasoline prices in South Carolina probably will just flirt with $3” a gallon this summer, but drivers shouldn’t blame the Gulf oil spill, says said Brendan Byrnes, spokesman for AAA Carolinas.

“In the short term, we don’t see the rise as being due to the oil spill,” he said.

Drivers in North Carolina probably will see that level or slightly higher, he said, but after about the third week in June, pump prices will drift down until around Labor Day.

“Oil prices are not likely to move much because of this oil spill,” said Hany Shawky, professor of economics and finance at the University of Albany in New York.

Shawky said he expects to see slightly higher gasoline prices this summer, primarily because of the increase in demand resulting from a recovering economy in the United States and robust growth in Asian countries. Europe is the weak spot when it comes to increased demand because of growth.

“This doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference in supply and demand,” said David Bodde, an economist at Clemson University with expertise in the energy sector. The oil rig that exploded was drilling for oil — product that had not made it into the commercial pipeline.