DeKALB – Gas prices continue to rise across the country. The average price of gas in Illinois on March 15 was $3 per gallon, according to GasBuddy’s daily survey of 4,378 stations in the state. That is a 10.7 cents per gallon increase from last week and see prices in the state 35.8 cents higher than a month ago and 80.9 cents higher than a year ago.

The cheapest station in the state was $2.49 per gallon and the most expensive was $3.63 per gallon, a difference of $1.14 cents.

On the national level, the average price of gas was $2.86 per gallon, an increase of 5.9 cents from last week. The national average is up 33.2 cents from a month ago and up 64 cents from a year ago.

“As Americans turn optimistic on COVID-19 pandemic recovery, we’ve been seeing insatiable demand for gasoline, which continues to recover far faster than oil production. According to GasBuddy data, last week’s gasoline demand was just 1% below the pre-pandemic level, an extremely bullish factor likely to continue driving gas and oil prices up in the short term,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy.

De Haan said that due to the imbalance between supply and demand, people can continue to expect rising gas prices for the time being.

“It’s no longer a question of if we’ll see gasoline demand return to near normal this year but when, and will oil producers rise to the occasion and be able to quickly ramp up output, or are we going to see the highest summer prices since 2014 until they jump into action? Only time will tell, but it’s looking like things are heating up far more than expected since the start of the year.”