Gas prices exceed $5.50 in McHenry County, northern Illinois

Filling up at a gas station in Crystal Lake, where one gallon of fuel hit more than $5.50 on Thursday, Wendy Reynolds of Cary said her family will have to cancel their annual road trips.

“We usually do two of them,” she said. “One at the beginning of summer and one at the end. That won’t be happening.”

On Wednesday night, the price jolted up to $5.55 for regular at many northern Illinois stations after having been $4.85 a day earlier.

As of this week, the average price for a gallon of regular gas, including taxes, in the U.S. hit about $4.62, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, up from about $4.18 just one month before.

In Illinois, the average gallon cost about $5.30 as of Thursday, up from $4.46 a month ago, according to Gas Buddy, a website used to track the latest gas prices in a specific geographic area.

The average weekly price for a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. hadn’t reached even $4 since 2008, according to EIA data.

Some in McHenry County, like Reynolds, are canceling plans altogether or truncating them as a result. And others are taking a more thoughtful approach to their everyday driving, cutting out unnecessary trips or being more strategic about their errands.

“It is what it is,” Reynolds said. “You just have to roll with it.”

Patrick Hataburda of Crystal Lake said the COVID-19 pandemic has led him to mostly work from home, but the rising prices has affected his driving habits.

“I put my car on eco mode now,” he said.

This summer, Hataburda expects to still go on a road trip, but it will probably be a shorter one, like to Lake Geneva about 30 miles north, rather than to a cross-country destination.

Sam Morin of Cary said she works from home so the high prices have not affected her directly, but her fiancé does commute and he “hates it.” She said the biggest impact on their summer plans has been with flights since they too have gone up in price. Even with that, she said it won’t stop them from traveling.

Besides yielding collective groans, those ever-increasing prices have prompted some action from lawmakers.

The Biden administration has released millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve and suspended a federal rule preventing the sale of higher ethanol blend gas to try to ease the price pressure.

At the state level, Democratic lawmakers have touted measures passed in this the fiscal 2023 budget to help residents amid rising inflation. A tax relief package approved by the General Assembly included a six-month pause on the automatic inflationary increase in the state’s motor fuel tax, estimated to be about 2 cents per gallon.

Still, the measure only stalled the increase and did not reduce the state’s tax on motor fuel which is used to fun infrastructure projects.

And Republican lawmakers have criticized the measures for not doing enough to help residents.

State Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, proposed a bill to cap the sales taxes collected in Illinois on motor fuel, although the bill went nowhere in the House of Representatives.

At the local level, McHenry County Chairman Mike Buehler, R-Crystal Lake, said the board has kicked around the idea of suspending its motor fuel tax, which is 4 cents per gallon. Although, while that could be an item considered in the coming months, Buehler said the cost-savings that could go with that would be “minimal” for motorists.

“I don’t know how much we can actually do about that [on a county level],” he said, attributing much of the issue to policies at the federal level and advising people to consider how they vote in the general election this fall.

Buehler said he’s talking with constituents – “the hardest working people in our society, the waiters, waitresses and truck drivers, or even small and large businesses alike” – who are struggling with rising energy costs “on a daily basis.”

“It seems to be a perfect storm of failed energy policies and monetary policies,” he said.

Even with policy proposals at the local, state and federal level, combating high gas prices goes far beyond public policy, said Michael Paone, the vice president of government affairs at the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce.

Paone said global events such as pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions and sanctions put on Russia for invading Ukraine have contributed to the pain at the pump. Plus, with summer coming, the busy travel season will only put more demand on the gas market.

While Paone said he’s “all for” reducing taxes, deeper remedies like investments in alternate fuel sources and domesticating parts of the supply chain could help, but will take a long time to institute.

“Unfortunately it’s a massive puzzle that’s got multiple crumbled pieces,” Paone said.

Morin said she thinks the spike can be attributed to overall driving picking up during summer. She also said the COVID-19 pandemic is still lingering, which is causing issues.

“We understand why it’s happening,” she said. “I have enough common sense to know not one president does all this. … Once the surge [of traveling] goes down, the price will go down.”

Hataburda contributed much of the increase to the Russian-Ukrainian war, but even with fuel reserves being opened, he hasn’t seen the price go down.