On Monday, GasBuddy called the drop in petrol prices at the pump a “ultra-rare” double-digit weekly drop during the summer driving season. However, this probably has nothing to do with the Biden administration’s decision to release all of the fuel from the nation’s petrol reserve.
The average price of regular unleaded petrol in the U.S. fell about 10 cents from the week before, to $3.40 per gallon on Monday, according to GasBuddy. This was the second week in a row that prices went down. That information comes from more than 12 million separate price reports for more than 150,000 petrol stations across the country.
In a press release, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said, “We’ve seen one of the biggest weekly drops in the national average price of petrol in some time. And what amazing timing that it comes at the start of the summer driving season.” “Gasoline prices have dropped in almost every state during the past week and compared to one month ago in almost every state.”
Petrol prices have dropped the most in a week since July of last year, according to De Haan. They are at their lowest level since 2021 in June.
“This is likely to happen because oil prices have gone down, refinery maintenance is over, and refineries have kept upping their output, which has increased supplies,” he said.
Petrol prices have gone down since the U.S. Department of Energy said last month that it would release 1 million barrels of petrol from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR) to help keep prices low during the summer driving season.
The reserve was set up after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, but it can only hold 1 million barrels, which is 42 million gallons of petrol. If the release happens, the reserve will be empty. Between Memorial Day and July 4, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said the gas in the reserve would be released in a “strategically” planned way.
But De Haan said he doesn’t think Biden’s decision to close the NGSR because Congress told him to is having a big effect.
“None of the states where the release would have an effect are on a list of the biggest drops in the past week or month,” he said.
For the NGSR, the largest amount of gas is stored in Port Reading, New Jersey, which has 900,000 barrels. The reserve is in the Northeast. Monday, the average price for regular unleaded in that state was $3.41. This is 17.1 cents less than a month ago and 5.7 cents less than a week ago.
Petrol costs more now than they did at the beginning of the year. One gallon of petrol cost $3.062 on January 1.
De Haan said that’s because there is more demand in the summer than in the winter, and the more eco-friendly summer blend of petrol costs more.
Since the end of last year, oil prices in the U.S. have been slowly going up. As of Friday, West Texas Intermediate crude futures CL.1, -0.31% CLN24, -0.30% were up 5.4% year to date. So far this year, futures prices for reformulated petrol RBN24, -0.57% have gone up by 13.3%.
