Oil prices reached an all time high today, topping $100 a barrel. It didn’t take long for that price to impact the consumer market: by 7 p.m., a drive northbound on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard showed the price per gallon for regular unleaded hitting a high of $3.07.
Clarksville Online began checking downtown, where prices hovered below that psychological punch of $3.00 a gallon, but once a driver moved from College Street toward St. Bethlehem, the price inched upwards to $3.03, $3.05 and finally topped out at $3.07 just north of I-24. Wal-Mart always discounted gas rested at $2.99, pennies shy of their competition.
We’ve been watching the price of oil and gas for months, noting that the price (for regular) always seemed to stop shy of $3.00 a gallon. Tonight our city joins others around the country in a collective gasp of sticker shock even as executives at places like Exxon are jumping for joy over record setting profits, an announcement that dovetailed neatly with the rising cost per barrel of oil.
If you are driving a Ford Explorer SUV, it will now cost you $69.07 to fill that tank (@$3.07/ gallon). Something to think about.
