Gas Prices | featured news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is weighing the circumstances that could warrant tapping the nation's strategic oil reserve, aware that supply disruptions from Iran could harm the global economy, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday.

Soaring gasoline prices are threatening to undercut President Barack Obama's re-election prospects and offering Republicans an easy target. With prices pushing $4 a gallon and threatening to go even higher, Obama sought Thursday to confront rising public anxiety and strike back at his GOP critics.

Gasoline prices have never been higher this time of the year. At $3.53 a gallon, prices are already up 25 cents since Jan. 1. And experts say they could reach a record $4.25 a gallon by late April.

Undeterred by costlier gas and airfare, millions of Americans set out Wednesday to see friends and family in what is expected to be the nation's busiest Thanksgiving weekend since the financial meltdown more than three years ago....

Inflation may have peaked after surging in the spring.

Consumers paid more for food and gas last month, although inflation outside those volatile categories was tame. The Labor Department says the Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent in September, below a 0.4 percent rise in August. Excluding food and energy, so-called core prices increased 0.1 percent, the smallest rise since March.

The economy grew slightly faster in the spring than previously estimated but remained dangerously weak in the face of high unemployment and higher gas prices. Many economists foresee slightly better growth in the current July-September quarter. The annual growth rate was 1.3 percent in the April-June quarter, up from an estimate of 1 percent made a month ago, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The improvement reflected modestly more consumer spending and a bigger boost from trade.

U.S. gas prices have edged up 6 cents over the past two weeks, but don't fret that a steady climb is on the horizon, the publisher of a new survey said Sunday.

Jim Davidson, author of "75 Ways To Save Gas," is a petrol skinflint who doesn't like to waste even the vapor of a drop of gasoline he's paid for, let alone the drop.

Consumer prices fell slightly more than expected in June to post their biggest drop in a year on weak gasoline costs, government data showed on Friday, pointing to a cooling in commodity-driven inflation pressures.