Experts: gas prices stall but will continue to rise

Editor’s note: On June 15, we published a story regarding the apparent/suspected causes behind soaring gas prices. It was originally the first in a two-part series addressing the problem. Due to the subject matter, the series has been extended into a three-part series, with the third installment to be published in the July 6 issue of the Weiser Signal American. Below is Part II.

 

 Two weeks ago, the average price of gas in the U.S. had hit an all-time high of over $5 per gallon, with some states reporting an average of well over $6 a gallon.

 According to GasBuddy data, national gas prices dropped by $0.09 over the previous week. The current national average is $4.91, down from an all-time high of $5.03 on June 3.

 Although the price climb has slowed somewhat, even that nominal relief is going to be short lived, according to Brian Sozzi in a Yahoo!Finance report.

 “According to forecasts by GasBuddy, gas prices could drop by $0.20 a gallon ahead of the July 4 holiday, and then head higher as people embark on summer vacations,” he wrote on Monday, June 27.

 Senior Energy Trader Rebecca Babin of CIBC Private Wealth Management predicts that prices will resume an upward trend with tight refining capacity in the oil industry.

 “I just don’t think that we have the refining capacity to put enough product on the market to really cause a massive sell-off,” she said on Yahoo!Finance Live. “Can we dip a little bit? Sure. Is it going to be enough to kind of get us back to $4.50 a gallon? I don’t think so.”

 AAA Idaho Public and Government Affairs Director, Matthew Conde, told the Weiser Signal American two weeks ago that the main problem is the cost of crude oil, which at the time was around $121 a barrel, about 50% higher than this time last year. He explained that the European Union’s ban on Russian crude oil following the country’s invasion of the Ukraine and OPEC’s lack of production are parts of the equation.

 President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, Tim Stewart, said in a JusttheNews.com interview that his industry has been hamstringed and even targeted by the Biden administration to be “sunset,” or completely wiped out.

 Biden has said as far back as 2020 that he wants to end the oil and gas industry, stating, “No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. It ends.”

 Did he really mean an end to all domestic drilling?

 Some say yes, pointing to an apparent worldwide forced shift to cleaner energy alternatives.

 Why?

Climate Change

 It appears that climate change is not a hoax as some people might suggest. Scientists worldwide tell us that not only is it real, it is entirely human caused.

 “Successive reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – mandated by the United Nations to assess scientific evidence on climate change – have evaluated the causes of climate change. The most recent special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees confirms that the observed changes in global and regional climate over the last 50 or so years are almost entirely due to human influence on the climate system and not due to natural causes,” wrote Mark New, director of African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town, in a 2019 article for phys.org. 

 Not every scientist agrees about this apparent final verdict, including former Trump appointee Myron Ebell, who is currently the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment.

 Look for Part III of this series in the June 6 issue of the Weiser Signal American.