Yikes!  When I saw $4.19 for the price of a gallon of gas in Bismarck Mandan this morning my heart sank.

Actually, I was a bit shocked when I saw $3.99 yesterday, a jump of 20 cents in one day at most stations.  I immediately went across the street to the Cenex gas station in Mandan on the strip to see what's up.

Their answer again, kind of shocked me.  

They told me to expect prices to soar to $4.30 or more over the next 24 hours.  At the time of this article gas is currently at $4.19, a price jump of 40 cents in less than 24 hours.

Unfortunately, this might be only the beginning of pain at the pump. 

Gas prices were expected to drop this fall.  Now, I'm not so sure about that.  According to GasBuddy, the Cornbelt can expect a significant spike in gas prices anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar.  This includes Minnesota, South Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota.

So, we might not even be halfway to how high it could go if prices do indeed soar to a dollar increase.  That would put prices closer to $5.00 dollars a gallon in North Dakota.

There were few details in the article on why the surge in gas prices, trade sources told GasBuddy a refinery outage might be the culprit.

No matter what the reason, we haven't seen gas prices this high very often.  $4.00 dollar gas is something that none of us want to get used to.  Let's hope this is only a quick spike and prices will be trending down again soon.

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