By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

Area gasoline prices took an unprecedented jump Wednesday, climbing an average of 25 cents a gallon overnight.

One Greene station raised its price for regular unleaded gas by 70 cents. Landry’s Quick Stop had posted a price of $2.599 on Tuesday. By Wednesday the fuel cost $3.299 there.

But pump postings varied widely around the Twin Cities. A noontime survey conducted by the Sun Journal found a low of $2.62 per gallon at Yvon’s off Lincoln Street and a high about three miles away of $3.26 at Berube’s on East Avenue. Those figures are rounded to the nearest cent.

The average worked out to $2.802 per gallon for regular. A day earlier, the average for that same gallon of gas was $2.558, according to figures provided by the Oil Price Information System via AAA New England.

“I have never seen anything like that,” said AAA’s Matt McKenzie of the overnight price jump. “This rapid? There’s been nothing like this in the 10 years I’ve been here.”

In the Rumford region, prices were up, but not as dramatically as in the Twin Cities. Exxon stations in Mexico and Rumford, as well as a Rumford Citgo, were charging the highest price – $2.89 – for regular gasoline in the River Valley. Other area stations were near the $2.77 mark.

Gov. John Baldacci’s office said consumers are calling “and have expressed anger and fear over the price increases. I am mobilizing my Office of Energy Independence and Security to work with the Attorney General’s Office, state agencies, and the private market to pursue more aggressive actions that Maine can take to address the rapid gasoline price increases,” Baldacci said in a prepared statement.

AAA’s McKenzie said he expects fuel prices to remain high throughout September, and perhaps October as well, as the nation recovers from lost production in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

More than a half-dozen offshore oil rigs were foundering in the gulf in Katrina’s wake, according to the Coast Guard. Daily crude oil production from the gulf – between 1 million and 1.5 million barrels daily – has been halted.

On top of that, scores of Gulf Coast refineries are off line as they deal with flooding and power losses.

The refineries produce about one-tenth of the nation’s daily gasoline needs.

The nation’s Energy Information Agency said Wednesday that while Katrina was a catastrophe with human costs that have yet to be calculated, “it was also exactly what oil market analysts feared the most this summer.”

The dire situation regarding gulf production of crude as well as the shutdown of refineries prompted President Bush to allow the release of limited supplies of crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The nation has 700 millions of barrels of crude in storage in salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas.

Staff writers Bonnie Washuk and Terry Karkos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.