Gas prices continue to hover well over $3 a gallon in Mississippi, and Brookhaven residents have taken notice.

     The price at the pump was between $3.61 and $3.67 a gallon Friday afternoon in Brookhaven. The national average Friday was $3.82 a gallon, according to gasbuddy.com.

     With a presidential election looming on the horizon, fuel prices could play a large role in who comes out on top in November.

     On Friday afternoon, several residents said they thought prices should be much lower than they are now and were frustrated with how high they are compared to the state of the economy.

     Hillary Dixon of Brookhaven said the U.S. should produce more oil.

     “We could have been independent of foreign oil by now, but we’re not,” he said.

     Dixon was hopeful for a decrease in prices soon.

     “I hope they go down as we get closer to the end of the year,” he said.

     Trina Carter of Brookhaven indicated the fluctuating price of gasoline is hard to fathom.

     “They’re too high now,” she said. “It goes up and goes down. You just never know.”

     While some just think fuel prices are too high, Brookhaven’s Shanquan Montgomery said with the economy like it is, prices are impacting people much more than in the past.

     “I think they’re going up, and the economy isn’t coming back,” she said. “Everything seems to be going up, even without a good economy.”

     Montgomery was critical of oil company executives and expected fuel prices to stay high.

     “I don’t think it’ll go down between now and the end of the year,” she said. “Fuel is a big business. (People in big oil) don’t care about what people are struggling with.”

     Karl Conger of Crosby said more drilling should be done in North America.

     “There is more oil in the U.S. and Canada than in the Middle East, but they won’t tap into it,” he said.

     Another Brookhaven resident, Larry Fletcher, said with this being an election year, prices may decrease some.

     “But if they did, it would only be temporary,” he said.

     Fletcher agreed the U.S. is too dependent on oil from places like the Middle East.

     “We’d rather get oil from foreign countries than drill ourselves,’ he said. “We’re supposed to be the superpower of the world.”