The average price of regular gasoline at U.S. filling stations rose to $1.86 a gallon as refiners shut units for maintenance and repairs and OPEC output cuts, Bloomberg reported.
The motor fuel gained 8 cents, or 4.3 percent, in the two weeks ended Jan. 23, according to oil analyst Trilby Lundberg's survey of 7,000 filling stations nationwide.
"The first reason gas is up is slightly higher crude oil prices," Lundberg said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. "Adding a little bit of impetus to that is demand is not hemorrhaging as it was."
Gasoline futures were buoyed in the past two weeks by a rise in crude oil as OPEC began to implement promised production cuts. Crude oil for March delivery rose $3.90, or 9.2 percent, this past week to $46.47 a barrel. Crude oil accounts for 56 percent of prices at the pump, according to the Energy Department.
U.S. refiners were operating at 83.3 percent of capacity in the week ended Jan. 16, compared with 86.5 percent a year earlier, according to the Energy Department.
AAA, the nation's biggest motoring club, said today that regular gasoline at the pump averaged $1.845 a gallon, up 3.2 percent from $1.792 on Jan. 11.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will curb supplies by 5.4 percent this month to 26.15 million barrels a day, according to preliminary estimates from consultant PetroLogistics Ltd.
Starting this month, the members with production targets, all except Iraq, have a combined quota of 24.845 million barrels a day. The 12-member group needs to make the deepest supply reductions in its history to comply with the revised quotas.
ConocoPhillips said earlier this week it shut a fluid catalytic cracker at its Sweeny, Texas, refinery for planned maintenance and was fixing the pollution control device on a catalytic cracker at its Borger, Texas, refinery.
BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company by market value, shut a 75,000 barrel-a-day crude unit at the Whiting, Indiana, refinery for unplanned work, a person familiar with the plant's operation said on Jan 23.