Business Notes Energy

Motorists may be getting nervous about the cross-country drives to Walt Disney World or the Grand Canyon that they had planned for this summer. Reason: the price of gasoline is suddenly spurting again. The Government reported last week that the cost of motor fuel rose 3.6% in March. That was the main reason for the .5% jump in the Consumer Price Index, its sharpest monthly increase since January 1984. In another report, the Oil and Gas Journal found that the average price of gasoline in the U.S. climbed 3 cents per gal. in March, to $1.15, which was 10 cents higher than it had been a year earlier.

Ironically, prices at the pump are now rising because they fell an average of 7 cents per gal. from last October through February. Gasoline refiners began reducing their inventories out of fear that prices would keep on dropping. That led to tight gasoline supplies and an abrupt turnaround in price.

Because world crude-oil supplies are abundant, most experts are optimistic about gas prices. Rutherford Poats, an economist with the Energy Futures Group in Bethesda, Md., predicts an increase of no more than 2 cents per gal. through midsummer.