Americans will pay $450 more for gas in 2022 than they did last year on an inflation-adjusted basis, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated this week.
“The share of disposable personal income allocated to gasoline expenditures reached its peak in 2008, just before the onset of the global financial crisis when oil prices were at record highs,” the agency stated in a report on its short-term outlook on energy prices.
Increasing another four cents overnight, gas prices on Wednesday reached an eleventh consecutive record high of $4.95, AAA data shows. Prices have risen 28 cents in one week and 64 cents in one month. Prices have doubled since Donald Trump left office.
Prices are expected to increase to over $6.00 per gallon before Labor Day, according to a JPMorgan commodities analyst. Prices are already averaging over $6.00 in California. Eighteen states are hovering around $5.00 per gallon.
In 2020, Donald Trump warned voters that if Biden won the presidential election, gas prices would reach at least $7.00 per gallon. “If Biden got in, you’d be paying $7, $8, $9. Then they’d say ‘get rid of your car!’”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters on Thursday that American drivers will have to pay at least $4.00 a gallon for the foreseeable future. “The price of gas is likely to remain above $4 per gallon,” she estimated based on Department of Energy data.
The Biden administration’s energy policies have fueled gas price hikes. These policies include driving up the private and public financing costs of oil drilling, halting drilling on public lands, and canceling the Keystone pipeline. Instead, Yellen blamed coronavirus and the war in Ukraine for the price spikes.
Despite Biden’s war on American energy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed on Tuesday that the Biden administration has exhausted its options to reduce energy costs for American citizens. “The administration has done everything that they can” to reduce energy prices, she said.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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