With gas prices having steadily risen along with virtually everything else that’s bought and sold in the U.S., Americans have been feeling an increasing pinch at the pump for months. And as Russia continues to wage war with Ukraine, that pinch is going to grow more painful before it eases up.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at price trackers GasBuddy, tweeted Monday that some cities across the nation could see gas in their area climb to $5 per gallon “in the next couple of weeks.”
In fact, that unwanted benchmark has already been surpassed in San Francisco, Calif., whose pumps were already showcasing fivers last week, and across the state of California, prices rose by 8 cents a gallon overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
Gas prices have already increased, on average, by 26 cents per gallon in the last month, and by about $1 per gallon in the past 12 months, according to numbers reported by AAA. The organization places the current national average at $3.61 per gallon.
Those already-rising costs to consumers are the backdrop for what’s to come internationally involving Russia’s oil production. The Russians are responsible for about 12% of the global oil supply, and that production is being put at risk by Vladimir Putin’s decision to wage war on Ukraine, even as the international reserves are being tapped for wallet relief that could be both minor and extremely temporary.
“Markets dismissed the notion that 60 million barrels of strategic reserves released will be consequential to the risks of Russian supply jeopardized,” Tan Boon Heng of Mizuho Bank said in a report. “Russia pumps more than that in just six days.”
It's not just the active warfare that could hinder Russian’s oil contribution to the global economy, as the U.S. is one of several nations mulling cutting Russian oil out of the equation completely, a contingency that the markets are already prepping for.
“We have not officially targeted their energy sector, but the previous sanctions the U.S. made are having a profound impact, and currently at this point, Russian crude oil is all but off the table,” De Haan told KNX.
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