The national price for gasoline jumped 5.1 cents a gallon over the last week and diesel fuel hit a record high, the government said on Monday. The average price for diesel fuel skyrocketed 10 cents to a record $2.012 a gallon, up 58 cents from a year earlier. Gasoline and diesel fuel prices are rising because of higher crude costs, which reflect traders' concerns about violence in oil-rich Nigeria and disruptions of U.S. petroleum supplies caused by Hurricane Ivan. U.S. crude oil futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped to a record $50 a barrel in after-hours trading on Monday. Crude oil accounts for roughly half of the cost of a gallon of gasoline sold at the pump. Although U.S. retail gasoline prices have risen, they remain lower than in most industrialized nations, which impose larger taxes on retail fuel.
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