So Russia invades Ukraine, which causes rising oil prices to surge even further, and makes it an almost certainty that Illinois' gas prices (along with the rest of the country) are about to really go up.

At the end of last week, gas prices in Peoria went up 6 cents per gallon in less than 24 hours, and it looks like those prices are just getting warmed up.

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A hand of cash for high priced gas.
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A Popular Gas Price Website Predicts Gas Prices Will Go Up 15 Cents Per Gallon In The Next Few Weeks

And even higher prices could follow within the next 60 days, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily looking at the fuel apocalypse,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis with the Oil Price Information Service. “But we’re in for a few months of higher prices.” Gasoline prices stood at an average of $3.819 a gallon in the Chicago metro area Thursday, up from $3.558 a month ago, according to AAA.

The fuel experts at GasBuddy.com predict that gas prices could go up by as much as 50 cents in the coming months, which, if that happens, means that gas prices in Illinois could exceed the highest recorded national average.

A sign with expensive gas prices.
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Newspaper headline " Surging oil and Food Prices"
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Concept of an oil barrel stylized as a rocket to illustrate soaring prices.
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It Was Only One Year Ago That Illinois Gas Prices Averaged $2.89 Per Gallon

But, times have changed. Friday, Chicago's gas prices stood at $3.99 per gallon, when it was $3.12 only a year ago. Nationally, gas prices averaged $3.57 per gallon as of Friday, up more than 20 cents from a month ago and 90 cents more than a year ago.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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