NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Gas prices in Kansas remain low relative to the rest of the country.
"Stability has been the word that we've seen at the gas pumps for quite a while now," said Shawn Steward with AAA Kansas. "It's still pretty much the same as we've been over the last month or so. We've actually seen, in the last week, a slight uptick, just a one cent increase in the average price here in Kansas, three cents higher than a month ago, exactly the same as we were a year ago, at $2.68 a gallon."
Central Kansas has some of the lowest prices in the state, with Reno County as the lowest at $2.47 a gallon.
"Despite the geopolitical issues going on in the Middle East that we've been watching for quite some time, that really hasn't done anything to effect our prices here domestically," Steward said.
Kansas is really well positioned relative to the rest of the country, as only Oklahoma has lower prices among Kansas border states.
"It doesn't look like we're going to be anywhere near $3 a gallon at the state level," Steward said. "We're a little higher than that on the national level. We'll just have to see where things head as summer travel kicks off later in the year."
More than 50% of the price of a given gallon of gasoline is based in the price of the crude oil from which it is refined.