Colorado gasoline prices matched a record high Monday and may be headed higher in the wake of soaring crude-oil prices.
The Colorado average hit $2.30 a gallon for self-service regular, tying the record price reached July 15, according to a AAA Colorado survey.
Nationally, gasoline prices set a new high this week of $2.37 as crude oil also climbed to a record peak Monday of $63.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In midday trading today on the Asian markets, oil prices climbed above $64 a barrel.
“We’re in uncharted territory,” energy analyst Tom Petrie of Denver-based Petrie Parkman & Co. said Monday at a Denver conference. “Energy is back at center stage. It’s reminiscent of (price peaks) in 1979 and 1980, but this time I think (high prices) are here to stay.”
At The Oil and Gas Conference in downtown Denver, Petrie said growing global demand for oil and slowing production in many parts of the world point to a future of tight supplies and persistently high prices.
“The price of oil has just been jumping left and right,” said Gene Peppin, owner of a Shell station at Federal Boulevard and West 96th Avenue in Federal Heights.
Peppin raised his price for regular gas by 10 cents a gallon over the weekend to $2.28, reflecting the 10-cent increase he received from his wholesale supplier.
“With crude-oil prices going up, we figure in a couple of days we’ll get hit with an increase again,” he said.
Analysts attributed the price jumps to several developments:
The U.S. Embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia were closed Monday after authorities announced a security threat against U.S. government buildings inside the world’s largest petroleum-producing country.
Iran, OPEC’s second-biggest player behind Saudi Arabia, resumed uranium conversion activities at its Isfahan nuclear facility Monday, a step that Europeans and the United States have warned would prompt them to seek U.N. sanctions against the Tehran regime.
A fire broke out at a Sunoco Inc. refinery in Philadelphia over the weekend. This followed a string of refinery fires and other snags over the past two weeks that have not severely diminished supply but made oil traders nervous.
“The fear factor is alive and well,” said oil analyst Jim Burkhard of Massachusetts-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
The market is keeping a close eye on tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico, fearing a repeat of last year’s Hurricane Ivan, which damaged oil facilities and caused output to drop for several months.
Bloomberg News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-820-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com.
