Did you fall out of bed this morning? I didn't, but came close. I wakened to my phone vibrating. It was a friend telling me that as expected, Speedway stations were raising prices to $2.75 from $2.50. That's a pretty big increase, no matter how you cut it. While I'm not complaining about the prices, I don't like how they have such large increases all at once.

Perhaps those of you who live in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Kentucky, and West Virgina understand what I'm talking about. It seems that in a few of those states, Speedway has complete control of the market, recklessly raising prices twenty to thirty cents at a time in some cases.

It's just one of those things, I suppose. While Speedway was busy raising prices to $2.65 in some states or to $2.75 here in Michigan, the rest of the country also saw a small increase in the national average overnight.

The U.S. average currently sits at $2.57, and I'm sure that will rise towards evening as our great members input Speedway's higher prices into the system. Canada is also seeing higher prices, paying an average of 97.3c/L this morning. In the coming weeks, Canada will likely top 100c/L again, while the U.S. could hit $2.62 by next week.

The reason why prices are going up have a lot to do with a bad report last week on draw-down of U.S. supply, but also has to do with how much refiners are producing. Utilization at U.S. plants last week was a paltry 80%, and the U.S. consumed 5 million barrels of gasoline more than it produced. Also pushing prices higher is the incredible weakness in the U.S. dollar compared to other currencies, making oil (traded in U.S. dollars) cheaper to just about everyone, pushing demand higher as oil becomes cheaper against a strong Euro.

What can we do? Sweat it out. Oil is trading near highs and seems to have some problem breaking out of the $80 range. If it sits at $79.XX too long, it risks a technical correction which would mean oil prices could fall back to $65-$75, also causing gasoline to get cheaper.