There are various factors that affect retail gasoline prices. Rising costs in crude oil in the world market has quite an effect on the eventual price of gasoline. Crude oil price is usually determined by worldwide supply and demand.
Whenever there are supply disruptions of crude oil in the world market, it would greatly affect retail gasoline prices. If there is an event that slows down or a stop in production among crude oil producing countries, the lack of supply would send the crude oil price up. And as the demand greatly increases due to crude oil being an essential ingredient for various industries, the rise in prices will trickle down into gasoline with crude oil being its raw material.