Recent surveys have found gasoline prices have gone up about 20 cents a gallon in the past two weeks.
In the last 48 hours, the highest-price gasoline in Iowa was found in Burlington, where it was selling for $2.51 cents a gallon. That’s just four cents below the national average.
Dawn Duffy of AAA Iowa/Minnesota says normally, gasoline prices in the Midwest are lower than in other regions of the country, but right now there are stations in Iowa that are "knocking on the door" of the national average.
Duffy says demand for gasoline is up right now, while refineries in the U.S. have decreased production. "Why is that happening? Because it’s a typical thing this time of year that refineries are slowing down to do their maintenance…before their summer-grade fuel production," Duffy says.
Demand for gasoline is much stronger than normal. In a "regular, normal year" there’s about a two percent increase in demand for gasoline, according to Duffy, but since December gasoline demand has gone up over three-point-three-percent.
While the highest price gasoline is being sold in southeast Iowa and the Spencer area in northwest Iowa, the state’s lowest price gasoline can be found in the Grinnell area, where regular unleaded was selling for $2.31 a gallon on Saturday.