Pump prices on pace to top 2009 high by weekend

The cost of filling up the car is rising in the wake of soaring crude and by this weekend, pump prices may race past the highs for all of 2009.

Tracing the ascension of crude, up 14 percent since mid-December, energy prices across the board are catching up.

It's part economic and part meteorologic.

Vicious pockets of cold stretched from the Northeast to the South, where farmers in the Florida panhandle tried to save tomato and strawberry crops. Four deaths in Tennessee were blamed on low temperatures.

The frigid blast has squeezed heating oil supplies in some areas during a year when demand had been very weak.

Falling supplies in recent weeks have contributed to prices driven higher by the falling dollar. When the dollar falls, investors holding stronger currency can essentially buy more dollar-based crude and they have, doubling oil prices last year.

Look at what happened just on Monday:

— Crude prices closed at $81.51 a barrel, the highest settlement price on the New York Mercantile Exchange since Oct. 9, 2008.

— Heating oil futures settled at $2.1905, well beyond the highest prices of 2009

— Gasoline futures hit $2.1044, the highest closing since Oct. 3, 2008.

By the weekend a gallon of gas will hit $2.70, higher that the peak for 2009, and will be pushing $3 by spring, predicted OPIS' Tom Kloza.

One of the breaks consumers got in 2009 was cheap energy. It's too soon to tell if the rising prices right are setting the trend for 2010, though Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover called sharply higher heating oil prices an "ominous sign for the year ahead."

Pump prices rose less than a penny overnight to $2.667 a gallon Tuesday, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services.

"Some back of the envelope arithmetic puts the current U.S. fuel bill at about $1.066 billion each day," Kloza wrote. "A year ago, that daily outlay was about $625 million."

Already, gas costs $1 more a gallon than a year ago, and that's costing a typical motorist about $50 more a month.

Heating oil, diesel and gasoline are all following crude.

A barrel of oil came within a penny of matching the high for last year early on Tuesday, before giving up early gains.

Benchmark crude for February delivery rose 26 cents to settle at $81.77 a barrel on Nymex.

In other Nymex trading in February contracts, heating oil fell less than a cent to $2.1841 a gallon and gasoline gained 1.4 cents to $2.1184 a gallon. Natural gas tumbled 25 cents to $5.634 per 1,000 cubic feet following a forecast that showed the Chicago area warming up later in the month.

In London, Brent crude for February delivery rose 9 cents to $80.21 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

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Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.