The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States has slowly subsided over the past few days — enough so that it has dropped back below the plateau of five dollars per gallon to $4.989 today, Saturday, June 18, 2022, according to data from the American Automobile Association.
Good News: National Average Gasoline Price Back Below $5 Per Gallon in the United States
The good news is primarily due to both a decrease in demand and an increase in the supply of crude oil. According to Data of the weekly petroleum status report from the Energy Information Administration of the United States ending as of Friday, June 10, 2022, crude oil inventories actually increased for the second consecutive week by another 1.9 million barrels to a total of 418.7 million barrels.
Unfortunately, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve decreased again by 7.7 million barrels from the prior week to 511.6 million barrels; and inventories of gasoline also decreased by another 0.7 million barrels to a total of 217.5 million barrels.
The reduction of the national average price of gasoline in the United States may likely be a slight temporary correction before continuing on its forecast by some economists of reaching six dollars per gallon.
Things could be worse: the price for a gallon of gasoline is $11.351 per gallon in Hong Kong, which is currently the most expensive price per gallon in the world.
Final Boarding Call
Unfortunately, what is occurring is the simple theory of supply and demand — and with regard to gasoline and other types of fuel, demand continues to increase substantially while supply simultaneously keeps decreasing significantly.
Until this imbalance is somehow corrected — either by an increase in the supply of fuel or a decrease in demand or a combination thereof — expect the price of a gallon of gasoline to remain high for the foreseeable future.
We can all do our part by trying to decrease the amount of gasoline which we use — and some suggestions are in this article which pertains to 5 Ways to Save Money on Fuel. You could save a few dollars every time you fill up your fuel tank — and that can add up rather quickly — while simultaneously reducing the demand for fuel.
In the meantime, hopefully the trend of the national average price of gasoline will keep decreasing…
All photographs ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
