US gas prices end this year near a peak in the pandemic

US gas prices end this year near a peak in the pandemic

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Not this year.

Gas prices are now near the highest point since the pandemic called for home-stay orders in March. According to AAA, the average price of a liter of ordinary gas on Thursday was $ 2.25, but that was only a cent of the nine-month highs reached last weekend, but by 13 cents higher than a month ago.

December and January are usually one of the lowest petrol consumption of the year, as short daylight hours and bad weather keep people from driving. And it suppresses gasoline prices in the winter. But recent approvals of Covid vaccines have raised hopes that next year will be a normal travel and economic activity again, raising the future of oil and petrol.

“There is tremendous confidence in the markets that demand will recover at some point in 2021,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, which estimates gas prices at 140,000 U.S. stations for AAA keep.

Low prices for gasoline, and especially jet fuel, earlier this year also spurred refineries to reduce refining capacity in North America by about 1.2 million barrels per day. This capacity reduction also helped to increase average petrol prices.

The low point for gas prices this year was at the end of April, when prices were $ 1.77 per liter lower, because the large stay-at-home orders designed to fight the pandemic caused a collapse in oil prices. Crude prices briefly turned negative in April in light of the drop in demand. The national average petrol price only rose to above $ 2 per liter in early June and has been rising slowly since then.

The average price is still 13% lower than the average of $ 2.53 per liter of a year ago. But then prices fell, not higher.

The $ 267 billion that drivers spent on gasoline this year was the lowest since 2004, and about $ 100 billion less than in 2019. And the average price of $ 2.18 for the year is the lowest since 2016, and the one to lowest average for the whole year in the last 16 years.

This week's oil price march was built on shaky ground

Even with the recent rise in the average price, just over a quarter of gas stations nationwide sell gas for less than $ 2 per gallon.

Kloza believes the markets may be a little ahead of where demand will be in 2021. He believes the relocation of more people working from home and the increased use of electric vehicles means that US oil consumption will never reach the average of 9.3 million barrels. reach from 2016 to 2019.

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