US retail gas prices have gone up lately.. and they may be stuck ion this range for the balance of the 2011. Is that too pessimistic to you? Well lets take a look why..

Due to emerging economies of China and India, refiners are facing a huge demand on Diesel fuels. There is a world wide demand for it and the crude prices are getting bid up keeping gas prices in US higher. “There’s some pretty heavy world-wide demand for diesel,” said Jim Williams, energy economist at oil-and-gas consultancy WTRG Economics.

US gas prices are estimated to be in the $3.00 to 3.30 range for most of the years, barring any wars or military conflicts which can flat out spike those numbers.

As the economy in US strengthens along with Asian counterparts, it will increase the demand on oil and related products to nearly 89 million barrels a day in 2011. Diesel demand in China alone is going to to be 3.00 million barrels a day this year which is an increase of  nearly 5 % since 2010. Therefore  US refiners are making a heyday on that increased demand since recession started 2 years ago.

Improving economy will also send commodity prices higher and crude oil prices to $90 a barrel. this will heat up the domestic prices upwards. There is plenty of speculation on those, but the prices are not coming down anytime soon due to increased demand and capitalization by oil companies of that demand.

According to Andrew Lipow of energy-consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates LLC ” “Absent a war or serious event, all commodities will rise” in 2011, Lipow forecast an average retail gasoline price of $3.15 to $3.20 a gallon.

After all these are new traits of a recovering economy and the desire to capitalize on the boom by oil companies or using the pretext to hold prices higher for rest of us in 2011. Stay tuned as public resentment grows on this issue alone. Its not over, you will hear a lot about it.