CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Last week, OPEC announced a decision to cut oil output by 2 million barrels per day in November. Since then, gas prices have risen.
In Corpus Christi, gas prices have jumped 20 cents in the last week, according to AAA.
The price increase is in anticipation of the oil and gas shortage.
“Gasoline prices and oil prices will react to any news about the market,” said Dr. Jim Lee, an economics professor at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. “What happens to the supply side or demand side, that is going to affect the price immediately.”
Dr. Lee said the price rise is to compensate for what gas companies anticipate prices will be once the supply is cut down.
“Economics 101: how the expectations, or speculations, affects the market immediately,” he said.
Dr. Lee expects the gas price hike will cause the price of other commodities to rise as well, and affect nearly every industry.
As the holiday season approaches, people will have to plan for higher prices when shopping for gifts.
“You can’t help but be aware of how high the prices are, because you say, ‘oh my God, it wasn’t that high before,’” said Bob Blackett, who was shopping at La Palmera Mall Thursday.
Blackett said he tries to keep the price of gas out of his mind when he’s shopping.
“I try not to think about that. It’d be nice for it to come back down,” Blackett said.
Others, however, have started early on their holiday shopping because of price increases this year.
“I started in August, because the prices of everything have gone crazy, crazy high everywhere,” said Crystal Shipp. “So, I just try to get ahead of things, and started shopping in August.”
Shipp has cut down on trips to the stores to cut down on gas usage.
“I feel like I’ve done a lot more online shopping than actually going into the stores. I used to come to the mall two, three times a week, now I come two, three times a month,” she said.
