Gas prices are expected to go up again and could bring “real pain” at the pump by Memorial Day.
Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum at GasBuddy, told Fox Business Tuesday that a surge in gasoline demand will lead to a “much more pronounced increase in prices” from March to May. He said gas prices could increase 10 to 20 cents every month until Memorial Day, with the national average hitting or surpassing $4 a gallon — the highest in a decade.
“March, April, and May are the months of the year that the stars align to create an environment that’s very conducive to larger price increases. Demand will start to dramatically rise as temperatures warm. That’s also the time when refiners do maintenance work and they’ll start to transition to summer gasoline. It could be a perfect storm that sees gas prices really starting to surge in March and lasting through Memorial Day,” De Haan told WIBC.
The national average price for a gallon of gas rose to $3.32 on Wednesday, according to GasBuddy. That’s up about a cent from last week and six cents from Christmas, but below last year’s high of $3.43 in November.
In Syracuse, gas prices are currently averaging $3.41, a steady decline from $3.49 in mid-November, according to GasBuddy. Gas prices previously fell as low as $1 a gallon during the early months of the Covid pandemic, but rose from $2.08 in November 2020 to $3 a gallon by June 2021.
What’s causing gas prices to go up? Besides an increase in demand, De Haan said ongoing conflicts in Libya and Kazakhstan have caused oil prices to rise — and there’s not much President Joe Biden can do about it.
“He can’t control Kazakhstan. He can’t control Libya. He can’t control the omicron variant,” De Haan told WIBC. “A lot of people have said, ‘Well he could approve a pipeline,’ but that’s really insignificant compared to other factors I just mentioned. He doesn’t have a lever that will help alleviate the situation.”
According to AAA, crude oil prices are also expected to rise due to optimism about a decline in Covid-19 cases as the omicron variant may have peaked in New York state and other parts of the U.S.
“In the past few weeks, we have seen the price for a barrel of oil slowly work its way from the mid-$60s to the low $80s,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said Tuesday. “And the primary reason is global economic optimism, whether well-founded or not, that the worst of Covid may soon be behind us.”
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