Amrith Ramkumar

speaker

860 appearances 16 recordings 1 series first heard May 2018 last heard Sep 2021

Amrith Ramkumar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · What to Expect for Summer Gas Prices · 22 May 2020 podcast

Gasoline prices at the pump are much lower than they were even a year ago or even at the start of the year just a few months ago.

The national average a few weeks ago was at about $1.74 according to GasBuddy, and that was a four-year low, and it's since bounced back up to $1.83.

Just a few months ago, it was well above $2.

So people are definitely, as states reopen, going to be able to take advantage of some of those lower prices around Memorial Day weekend and into the summer.

It's really important when looking at gas prices to understand that there's a ton of variation across the U.S.

So national average prices are useful to look at, but depending on state gas taxes, refining costs, marketing, and activity by energy companies, we see a ton of dispersion.

We recently California, for example, has had much, much higher prices than the rest of the country.

And currently places like Texas, Oklahoma and in the Midwest, places like Ohio, Wisconsin have very low prices.

So there's a lot of dispersion there.

So some people are definitely being able to take advantage of ultra low prices right now.

An interesting question when looking at kind of the economic impact is whether people will actually spend more as they get out and about more.

So we're seeing things like driving directions requests on Apple Maps and their mobility reports show a huge uptick in people driving, but it's not exactly clear whether they're actually going to places and spending money.

So that's a big question moving forward as well.

That's a really good question.

Again, it varies a lot, but it usually takes at least a few weeks.

That's why in April when we saw one price for U.S.

crude oil drop below zero for the first time ever, gasoline prices at the pump really weren't able to keep up because the plunge was so fast and so dramatic, and oil prices bounced right back up within a matter of days.

So it usually takes a little while, and that demand for oil is also demand for gasoline that we're seeing rise.

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