The price of gasoline went down when the pandemic hit.

[kentuck]

It was about the same as the present price that everyone seems to be complaining about before that. The price of gas is more important to some than whether or not they have a democracy, it seems?

But, I hear this argument a lot, about how much the price of gas has gone up.

And from my experience in the past, gasoline usually goes up before the spring and summer holiday driving.

[underpants]

1. I'm pretty oblivious to gas prices. I'm guessing this is a RW talking point now

and the media is dutifully following along.

I get gas about 3 times a month maybe 4. 5 gallons at a time. I seem to remember it was around $2 so I put in 10 and now I put in $12-15 I think.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. I've heard that too and tried to explain it

The price of gas goes up in the summer when they switch to the "summer blend" which has to do with evaporation and less pollution. Obviously I need to study up on exactly how this works, but the price goes up in the summer (starting June 1st) for this reason.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Tends To Be Overstated

There are very high population states that don't change blends by season.
Roughly half the country doesn't change, and the other half use a blend that costs under 0.5¢ a gallon.
This is a persistent talking point started by...wait...the petroleum industry. But, they knew that was disinformation when they started it.
You'll find lots of web references to "summer blend" which is exactly what the creators hoped.
Summer time, also vacation time, means more travel, kids sports teams traveling, etc. Demand is higher and petrol firms and speculators bid prices up to what the market will bear.
It's much more microeconomic profit taking and far less chemistry.
In this recent case, several refineries in Texas shut down because they were unprepared for the cold blast. Commodity traders bid up the price of refined product. Prices shot up.
Before those refineries got back to full rate, a couple of idiots in a giant ship blocked the Suez Canal.
The majority of Europe's middle east & east African oil got delayed, just as demand was rising.
They dipped into strategic supply but the cost model assigned current crude price. (Still elevated.)
Refined goods are sent to market as "raws plus". So, aside from futures contracts extant, refined prices rose because of crude.
Then, the Saudis cut supply a bit. That was just when European countries were buying crude to backfill strategic reserves.
All this led to a price hangover that bumped into summer demand increases.
So, prices stayed at a level no longer justified by supply/demand relationships.
I still think they'll fall, but not 50¢. I'm guessing 7 or 8%.

[jimfields33]

7. It not June 1st yet. So it got to be another reason it's going up.

[RandiFan1290]

9. Yeah, the improving economy

[Thomas Hurt]

3. Doesn't matter what the price is, the christofascists find it too high...

as long as there is a Democrat in the WH. Within a month of Biden's taking office the right was whining on facebook about it.

[doc03]

4. The economy is improving things are opening up

and people are going to travel more of course they are going up. But that is all the Republicans have talk about.
Building prices are also going up.

[ClimateHawk]

5. Gas prices are where they were at this point in 2019.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2021/04/20/weekly-gasoline-prices-wtic-up-6-2

But people don't care about the facts.

[Ron Green]

8. If gas prices were truly high, behavior would change

so that people wouldn’t sit in their cars and trucks idling for 20 minutes. They wouldn’t commute every workday an hour each way, alone, using the time for books on tape. They wouldn’t jump in the car on a fine day for an errand two miles away. And so on.

Petrol at the pump in this country has never been high, and we know this because harmful behavior has never changed.

[genxlib]

10. I was thinking something related

I bet you could chart the level of whininess against the fuel efficiency of their vehicles and find a direct correlation. I am certain many of these people are the same ones driving stupidly inefficient gas guzzlers

If they really cared, there is an easy way to spend less on gas. But you know, freedom...

[DinahMoeHum]

11. If you look at commodity futures charts over months and years. . .

. . .you'll see that crude oil and gasoline tend to go up in the spring, hit a peak in early summer, then gradually go down the rest of the year until they're usually at their lowest in the winter.

What happened in March-April 2020 was obviously an aberration and a disruptive event. And as this pandemic hopefully peters out during the next few months (at least here in the US), we'll see prices come back to what they were (as someone else here has stated) back to the 2019 levels and then through their seasonal tendencies.

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

12. Where I live, when the price of gas goes up the repukes blame Democrats.

It does not matter if it is a Democrat administration or a repuke administration. Somewhere some how a Democrat did it. God, I hate living in a red county.