Joe Wallace
speaker
68 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2019
last heard Mar 2021
Joe Wallace’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
WSJ Your Money Briefing · Gas Prices Keep Rising. Is There Any Relief in Sight? · 24 Mar 2021
podcast
Normally, one would expect consumers to start to change their driving habits to try to cut back on the amount of fuel they buy as prices approach about $3 a gallon.
But the question is whether that pattern will hold this year.
Thanks, JR.
It's a pleasure to be on.
Yeah, as you say, this is an unusual surge in gasoline prices in the spring.
We'd normally expect prices to rise closer to the summer.
And really, it's a combination of factors.
One is that there's been a big drop in the amount of gasoline in storage around the U.S.,
That stemming both from the deep freeze that hit Texas in February, which knocked a lot of petroleum refiners, which convert crude oil into gasoline, out of action for a while.
And it's also because refiners had already throttled back production significantly last year in response to the collapse in energy prices that made producing gasoline almost unprofitable at one point.
And then the other factor driving up prices is simply the rise in the crude oil price, which has been fairly stunning.
If you remember just under a year ago, US crude prices fell below zero for the first time.
They're now back at around $60 a barrel.
And that's largely as a consequence of the production cuts, both by American crude producers in Texas and elsewhere, and also by Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other major international crude oil exporters.
So, so far, the recovery that we've seen in the gasoline price doesn't really reflect a massive surge in demand for gasoline by American drivers.
But some analysts are expecting prices to keep heading higher because as the vaccines are widely distributed and restrictions on movement ease, they expect there to be a wave of driving activity heading into the summer as people, you know, are really chafing at the bit to get out of lockdown and that will drive up gasoline demand and prices.
Yes, indeed.
We spoke to several people who have to drive to get to work.
Some of them, you know, hundreds of miles to get, you know, for example, if you work in a construction firm and you're building homes right now in this booming housing market, you need to get around.
And for some people running, for example, small businesses, they've seen their fuel bills rise significantly and that's a hit to their bottom lines.
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