Drive to $5: When Will Binghamton Gas Prices Get There?

Just two months after drivers in the Binghamton area started paying four dollars a gallon for regular gas, many are wondering whether the price will soon hit five dollars.

The price at many local retailers jumped to $4.699 on Monday. Motorists - who already were trying to adjust to the big increases over the past several weeks - were taken by surprise by the jump to an all-time record high price.

Drivers who shopped around Tuesday morning could still find cheaper prices. One independent convenience store in Westover had a posted price of $4.399.

The pump price for regular gasoline was $4.399 at a store on Main Street in Westover on May 10, 2022. (Photo: Bob Joseph/WNBF News)

Patrick DeHaan of GasBuddy.com said it's been "tremendously difficult" to accurately predict gas prices this year because of the war in Ukraine and the constantly changing Covid-19 situation around the globe.

Speaking on WNBF Radio's Binghamton Now program, DeHaan indicated $5 a gallon in the Binghamton market isn't out of the question.

DeHaan said "I really hope we don't get there." He said for Binghamton "that's probably improbable... but improbable is not the same as impossible."

With conditions around the world changing daily, DeHaan said "there's a very high degree of difficulty with predicting fuel prices accurately." He said "that's why there is a possibility of five dollars this summer but at this point I don't see how we're going to get there."

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Contact WNBF News reporter Bob Joseph: bob@wnbf.com. For breaking news and updates on developing stories, follow @BinghamtonNow on Twitter.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.