(The Center Square) – Gas prices have been elevated in recent months heading into summer, when prices are expected to rise even more.
According to AAA, the average national price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is $3.65 per gallon, up from $3.59 a month ago. The prices have fluctuated in recent days and are lower than the all-time high of $5.02 in the summer of 2022. However, prices overall have risen significantly this year and are on pace to rise more in the summer months.
Oil prices dipped about 6% last week before stabilizing this week and beginning to rise again. Prices have risen about half a dollar so far this year, and are much higher than when Biden took office at roughly $80 per barrel.
“That’s still about $30 above the average price during the Trump administration. Oil has not gone even higher because most economic signals indicate a slowing economy,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future, an energy workers advocacy group, told The Center Square. “We have seen terrible job numbers, inflation, numbers, and economic indicators are signaling to markets that future demand will be down.
In recent weeks, prices have leveled out but are expected to rise this summer.
“Though it is great to see oil prices, stabilizing, and we hope they drop even significantly further, this is not happening because of positive news or robust production, but because we are headed into very dark economic times,” he continued.
Critics have blasted President Joe Biden’s energy policies as partly responsible for elevated energy costs.
“More regulation and higher taxes have caused drillers to reduce rig counts and focus on making each rig hyper-efficient to keep down costs,” E.J. Antoni, an expert at the Heritage Foundation, told The Center Square. “That strategy has been largely successful, which is why production has trended upward even as rig count and employment have declined. But we’re at the point where drillers cannot extract anymore per well than they are now, so any increase in production must come from overseas.”
Overseas production presents a problem now because two of the largest oil producing regions, the Middle East and Russia, are embroiled in war. Any expansion of the Israel-Hamas war to neighboring countries would likely spike prices as well.
“With so much chaos in the world right now, that has left the American consumer at the whims of rogue states and dictators,” Antoni continued. “Furthermore, the hostile tax and regulatory environment applies to refiners too, as well as other members of the gasoline supply chain. The higher costs imposed on them are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices at the pump.”
To help keep prices down earlier in his term, Biden depleted the U.S.’ Strategic Petroleum Reserves.
Antoni also blamed inflation, which has soared since Biden took office, for making going to the pump more painful for Americans. He predicted higher gas prices this summer.
“Going into the summer, we’ll likely see the typical seasonal demand spike, but supply will have a hard time keeping up,” Antoni told The Center Square.
Joe must be kicking himself that he stole and emptied our strategic oil reserve in time to steal many of the midterm elections but now like Old Mother Hubbard, he has no more bones to toss WE THE PEOPLE before his own re-election to dupe us into thinking that Bidenomics actually works. Unlike true democrats whose traditions are to distort the economy before the election, only to make THE PEOPLE regretfully pay after the election when its too late to complain, show that Joe must really be in a mental state of confusion, and can’t even get the party standards of corruption right. At least he got the Student Loan forgiveness fraud timing right. Fool us once same on Joe, fool us twice, shame on us.
And to think Joe could have gone down as one of the greatest presidents of all time if he had just DONE NOTHING after taking office. But, No-o-o-o-o-o! He had to put on his Obama knee pads.
Heck O’bamma himself said “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to **** things up!”
In WA State add another buck to gas prices (and everything else goes up in turn) for governor Gay Inslees carbon tax.
Madness! MADNESS!
I honestly feel his ‘draining our strategic reserves, was DELIBERATELY DONE.
Gee what gives you that idea, just because he did drain the reserves on purpose. I don’t know what the prices of gas are in other states but here in cali depending on what part of the state you are in gas prices are as much as $5.69 per gallon and going up, just last month those prices were down around $4.69 per gallon so up by a dollar so far. This crazed governor we have wants to push the gas prices over $7.00 per gallon by the end of the year. Yeah these Satan worshipping (DEMON) CRATS are killing and have killed the whole of the nation’s economy and they plan to cause a total collapse of not just the economy buy everything.
They’re well on their way to achieving that.
“we’re at the point where drillers cannot extract anymore per well than they are now, so any increase in production must come from overseas.”
“With so much chaos in the world right now, that has left the American consumer at the whims of rogue states and dictators,”
Note that in year 2020 the U.S. was energy independent. But on the fist day that the treasonous, corrupt, puppet president Joe Barack OBiden took office, he started destroying our U.S. energy independence. As a result Everything went up in price.
“we’re at the point where drillers cannot extract anymore per well than they are now, so any increase in production must come from overseas.”
OR…you could drill more wells. Duh!
But whatever was happening the day before Biden “took” the office, go back to THAT! It was working, for everyone but America haters.
THE LEFT hates this nation, THIS IS WHY they don’t want us to be energy independent.