Gasbuddy.com analyst explains gas hike

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Gas prices jumped more than 20 cents overnight, Monday into Tuesday, and lots of people want to know why.

Several of you asked about this using our Report!t tool.

Analysts at Gasbuddy.com were able to tell us what led to this increase. They said a refinery in Illinois has been scheduled to shut down for a couple of weeks for maintenance. A refinery is what turns crude oil into gasoline we put into our gas tanks. Just to put it into perspective, on June 1st the refinery announced it was going to shut down. Last week we were paying $3.57 a gallon. That was less than the national average. Now we're paying almost 30 cents more than the average.

"They are taking some of their production offline to perform that maintenance. And so supplies is expected to tighten in the region with the loss of production from that facility," Gasbuddy.com analyst Patrick DeHaan said.

The region the analyst was talking about was our region - the Great Lakes. He said another refinery in Northwest Indiana also shut down unexpectedly due to a malfunction. That should be resolved soon. On the other hand, it will take anywhere from two to six weeks before the refinery in Illinois is producing gasoline again.

Analysts at Gasbuddy.com expect prices in our region to fall here soon and then climb back up again. They said it may be a painful summer at the pump.