“In 2021, oil companies started to increase production again, but given a lot of the supply-chain kinks that developed and the fact that they had laid off thousands of workers, they weren’t in a position to instantly turn that capacity back on.”įrom January to May of 2021, gas prices soared 70 cents to top $3 per gallon nationwide, and that was all before the global energy market was hit with another unexpected hardship-Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “A lot of the imbalances in the market were started because of the abrupt shift in consumer behavior during the pandemic,” De Haan said. Suppliers weren’t ready for the new normal, which created a supply-demand mismatch leading gasoline prices to rise. gas prices over the past few years is the now familiar pandemic-driven mismatch of supply and demand.Īt the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, demand for oil and gas plummeted as millions around the world lost their jobs and were unable to travel.ĭiminished demand caused oil companies to curtail their production, but then, when vaccines allowed the economy to reopen, demand rebounded faster than expected, albeit not all the way to pre-panemic levels. One of the key culprits in the rise in U.S. A pandemic-induced supply and demand mismatch Industry experts agree on three huge factors behind the recent rise in gas prices, but they’re split on a fourth, and De Haan argues Biden is contributing to the problem with what he calls an “open hostility” toward the oil and gas industry. “Much of why we’re paying higher prices today has less to do with Biden and more to do with COVID, Russia, and other issues.” “I think the president gets wrongly blamed for most of the increase in gas prices,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the real-time fuel-pricing app GasBuddy, told Fortune.

He ordered a record-setting release of 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in late March and has been pushing to get producers to increase supply, but thus far, he’s been unable to quell rising energy costs. The policies of the executive branch can undoubtedly play a role in the price of gas, and Biden is just the latest in a long line of presidents to be blamed for rising costs at the pump, but experts say there’s more to the story.Īnd Biden has been trying. He’s pushing back against the idea that he’s responsible, saying at a White House press conference last week, “The idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, it’s not likely in the near term.”īut just 27% of voters say they approve of the president’s handling of rising gas prices, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. And many blame the president for their rising cost of living, especially when it comes to the price of filling up at the pump. That’s a 61% increase from a year ago and more than double what it was when President Biden took office in January 2021.Īs a result of rising costs, seven in 10 Americans now say inflation is the most critical issue facing the nation, according to a recent Pew Research poll. The average price of a gallon of gas moved to a record high of $4.91 nationwide on Tuesday. As the summer travel season heats up, gas prices are soaring, and Americans aren’t happy about it.

Gas prices skyrocket