U.S. stocks headed for a moderately higher open Wednesday after retail sales showed the largest increase in 16 months, signaling higher gas prices might not be hitting consumers as hard as some on Wall Street had feared.

Valery Golubev, the deputy chairman of Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom's Management Committee, said in April that the price of gas charged by Gazprom to Ukraine will depend on how closely the economies of both countries are prepared to cooperate, the Ukrainian website proUA.com reported.

Few have been unaffected by the rapidly increasing price of gas, which has inched its way up toward $4 a gallon in some parts of the United States. And consumers aren't feeling those effects just in their wallets, a Florida State University professor has found.

Gas prices broke records throughout most of Southern California during the first week of May, zooming up suddenly on news of more refinery supply problems, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California's Weekend Gas Watch.

Energy ministers from Iran and Qatar denied that the world's largest natural gas exporting countries, who held talks here on Monday, intend to band together as a cartel. Discussions at the 16-member Gas Producing Countries Forum focused on deepening cooperation between gas producing countries with an aim to create a stable world market for the fuel, Iran's Minister of Petroleum Seyed Hamaneh and his Qatari counterpart Abdullah al-Attiyah said.