Little relief at the pump this Labour Day

The big spike in gasoline prices is just about over, but it's too late to bring much relief for Labour Day weekend.

The national average price for gasoline inched up just 0.3 cents Friday to $3.83 per gallon, ending a string of dramatic increases caused by Hurricane Isaac.

"We're in the ninth inning of this," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

Still, drivers will pay the highest pump prices ever for this time of year.

The sky-high prices are keeping people like David Keup of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, home. He was planning to visit a few friends near Coleman, Wisconsin this weekend, but now he's going to abandon the 285-mile round trip.

"It's not worth the added expense," he said.

Isaac, now slowly disintegrating over the middle of the country, forced several Gulf Coast refineries to shut down or operate at lower rates. This has deprived markets of millions of gallons of gasoline and sent prices sharply higher.

The storm pushed the national average gasoline price up 10 cents per gallon in one week, including a 5 cents gain Wednesday that was the biggest one-day gain since February of 2011.

But the price surge appears to be over. Kloza expects average gasoline prices to creep higher during the weekend then start falling after Labour Day, the last big driving weekend of the summer.

Pump prices were on the rise even before Isaac arrived. The average gasoline price rose about 40 cents from July 1 to mid-August because of refinery problems in the Midwest and West Coast, and sharply higher crude oil prices.

Crude has traded between $94 and $97 per barrel for two weeks, after rising from a low near $77 in late June.

AP