BATON ROUGE - Just when prices were going down, gas is already back to around four dollars a gallon in Baton Rouge.

"What are we paying? $3.99 trying to get through the storm" driver Alicia Jones said.

Drivers say it seems the prices didn't have a chance to drop before rebounding.

"I am a full-time student, and I travel to Hammond twice a week and we've had classmates express to professors that they can't make it." Mallory Picard said.

And since driver Margarita Johnson can't do anything about it, she is prepared to pay more to get around.

"It's not as easy to get around Baton Rouge if you don't have your own car, so we have to keep paying these gas prices I guess," Johnson said.

"I wasn't surprised about it" LSU energy researcher Cody Nehiba said. "In the short run here we are going to have rising prices into the summer driving months as we continue to drive more and more."

The researcher also says the war in Ukraine is still affecting gas prices, and releasing the strategic oil reserves is not doing as much because of too much demand.

"We're seeing some of our stock dwindling so we have a low inventory of these fuels," Nehiba said.

But Picard already has a plan if gas gets too high.

"If they keep going up, I'm going to get me a bike," Picard said.

And drivers are now saying that staycation is sounding better and better with every penny that gas prices increase.