ELMHURST, Ill. (CBS) ¯ CBS
Have you filled up your tank lately? Were you surprised by how much you paid?
If you're worried about a return of $4-a-gallon gas, you might want to listen to what Chief Correspondent Jay Levine has to say.
It may not be a rerun of last year but it's sure starting out that way. Gasoline prices have surged 20 to 30 percent in the last few months.
This story, like many of our reports, starts with one of many emails CBS 2 received from viewers.
Tom Hohman wrote: "Dear Jay, this country is never going to get out of the hole if something is not done to stop the greedy oil companies," the email said. "I can prove that there's a certain gas station and their owners are gouging people right here in the metro area."
We took Tom up on his offer, meeting him at his local Citgo station in Elmhurst.
"(It was) $2.57 yesterday, $2.55 the day before," he said. "And here's the sneaky part of it: You do 2 cents a day, nobody notices, but at the end of the week, you're looking at 10 cents a gallon."
Tom isn't the only one upset about it.
"It's too much," Chris Owens of Oak Brook said of the cost. "Clearly somebody ought to do something about this."
Of course it's still a lot less than we were paying just a year ago, when the roller coaster peaked at over $4 a gallon, then plunged to less than $2, before starting to rise.
Prices have gone up, then down, then back up again so fast you can get whiplash just watching them. Why is that?
"We went from two years ago not being able to keep up with demand, raising prices so we can have enough supply to the opposite end of the equation, where demand is so poor, refineries are shutting down," oil industry analyst Phil Flynn said.
They're shutting down in part because we're still driving less than we used to.
"You wanna look at the daily trips. Commuting is a big chunk of that, but also just errands and dropping the kids off at school," Peter Skosey of the Metropolitan Planning Council said.
Watch the complete segment online at CBS 2.
