by Ben Whedon
Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil on Tuesday confirmed that it had evacuated nonessential personnel from the Middle East amid the ongoing war with Iran that has embroiled most of the region.
“Our first and highest priority is making sure our people remain safe, and we evacuated folks who weren’t critical or essential to the operations that we were providing support for,” CEO Darren Woods told Reuters.
Exxon’s actions mark the latest corporate entity to suspend, scale down, or otherwise disrupt operations in the region in response to the conflict. Shipping giants Maersk and Cosco have suspending cargo bookings while many regional oil production firms have shuttered production due to Iranian targeting of their equipment.
Oil prices have fluctuated in recent days, rising well over $100 per barrel, but they have since fallen below that threshold.
Due to rising oil prices, gas prices around the country have increased. The average cost of gas in America was $3.539 on Tuesday, up from $3.109 last week. This represents a 14% percent increase in gas prices over the last seven days.
A month ago, the average gas price in America was $2.921. Thus, gas prices have increased 21 percent over this time period.
The states with the highest average gas prices are California, Washington and Hawaii.
California’s average gas price is $5.290, while the average gas prices in Washington and Hawaii are $4.687 and $4.594, respectively.
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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Photo “ExxonMobil Gas Station” by Harrison Keely. CC BY 4.0.
