Ouch.

The average price for a gallon of gas soared to record heights this week, according to the latest information from AAA Utah.

AAA reported Tuesday that the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline in the state hit $2.98 on Monday, an 11-cent leap in the past 30 days and 60 cents higher than this time last year.

"This marks a dramatic change for Utah motorists, who just one month ago were paying some of the lowest prices in the country for gasoline," Rolayne Fairclough, AAA Utah spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement. "The good news is prices throughout the country have started to decline over the past week, so Utahns should start to feel some relief from these record highs soon as well."

The largest increases were in Logan, which saw a 14-cent jump in the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas, to $2.99. Moab, Ogden and Salt Lake City all saw 12-cent increases, to $3.01, $2.94 and $2.93, respectively. The average price for regular unleaded was $3.02 per gallon in St. George, an increase of 9 cents during the past month.

That said, Utahns were still better off than many of their neighbors, according to the AAA Utah report. Idaho's price jumped 13 cents during the last month, to an average per-gallon price of $3.02. Montana saw the biggest increase of all the states in the Intermountain West, 29 cents, to its current average of $3.14. Wyoming's price increased 22 cents to the current average of $3.03.

Nationally, AAA reported that the average price of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline was $3, up 3 cents from last month and 52 cents higher than August 2005.

AAA Utah surveys a limited number of communities across the state in its monthly gas report. Individual service stations sell gas at both higher and lower prices, sometimes even in the same city block. AAA's report focuses on self-serve regular gasoline without regard to its octane level.

Looking ahead, AAA Utah said that there are "signs of improvement on the horizon."

"Recent events that threatened to drive fuel prices up have not had as significant an impact on the energy markets as expected," the travel advocacy group stated.

AAA said BP's announcement earlier this month regarding its Alaska oil field seems to have had less of an effect on output than some analysts predicted and feared, and the official cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel has calmed some fears. Meanwhile, AAA said, U.S. oil inventories remain at healthy levels, and produc- tion of gasoline continues to be strong.

Light sweet crude oil for September delivery fell 48 cents to settle at $73.05 a barrel in electronic trading Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. September Brent at London's ICE Futures exchange settled at $73.80 a barrel, down 50 cents.

A day earlier, oil prices fell as much as $1.75 a barrel as the cease-fire began and investors responded to news that BP expects to maintain half of its production at a large oil field in Alaska despite a pipeline leak.

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Contributing: The Associated Press

E-mail: jnii@desnews.com