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Gas prices are falling along with demand, despite arrival of summer
Gas prices are falling across the nation, a pleasant surprise for U.S. drivers as fuel prices typically surge this time of year.
The average price for regular unleaded gas in the U.S. was $3.44 per gallon on Monday, down roughly 9 cents from a week ago, according to AAA. That’s 19 cents less than a month ago and 14 cents less than last year, according to the auto club.
Gas prices are falling because demand for fuel has weakened and oil prices have tapered off, energy experts said, an unusual set of circumstances for the summer season when fuel demands generally peak as more Americans go on road trips for vacation.
“Not only have gasoline prices plummeted in nearly every state in the last week, but nearly every state has also seen prices drop compared to a month ago,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a note Monday. “With the declines, Americans will spend roughly $425 million less per week on gasoline than a year ago.”
Americans cut back on travel
Gasoline demand slipped to about 8.94 billion barrels a day last week, down from 10 billion barrels needed per day this same time last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. One reason fuel demand has fallen appears to be that Americans are not traveling as much as they used to, noted one expert.
“Demand is just kind of shallow,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said. “Traditionally — pre-pandemic — after Memorial Day, demand would start to pick up in the summertime. And we just don’t see it anymore.”
To be sure, Americans are pinching their wallets tighter due to sticky inflation which is leading many consumers to change their habits. Demand for gas is also down as more drivers have opted for electric or hybrid vehicles, experts said.
The drop in gas prices is also notable given that oil companies are now switching to their summer blend of fuel, which is uniquely designed to not evaporate as quickly in warmer weather. Refineries make more than 14 kinds of summer blend due to different state regulations, making the production process even longer, thus driving up prices.
Additional factors fueling price decline
Still, other factors are also at play. The Biden administration last month announced that it would release 1 million gasoline barrels, or about 42 million gallons, from a Northeast reserve with the aim of lowering prices at the pump.
Experts also point to cooling oil costs. Prices at the pump are highly dependent on crude oil, which is the main ingredient in gasoline. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, has stayed in the mid $70s a barrel over recent weeks, closing at under $78 a barrel on Monday. That’s “not a bad place for it to be,” Gross said.
“This price-decline party is ramping up, and I expect additional declines ahead of July 4 for both gasoline and diesel prices,” De Haan said.
Oil prices can be volatile and hard to predict because they’re subject to many global forces. That includes production cuts from OPEC and allied oil-producing countries, which have previously contributed to rising energy prices.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccines official says he hopes to find common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was picked Thursday by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
“What I would ask of him is that he keep an open mind. We’re happy to try to show as much of the data as we can. And I think the data are essentially overwhelming, in certain areas, but we’ll just have to engage in the dialogue,” said Dr. Peter Marks, speaking at an event hosted by the Milken Institute in Washington, D.C., this week, ahead of Trump’s decision.
Kennedy has insisted that he is not “anti-vaccine” and has pledged not to ban vaccines under Trump. Instead, Kennedy has promised to “restore the transparency” around vaccine safety data and records that he accuses HHS officials of hiding.
Marks flatly rebuked Kennedy’s claims about the safety data.
“There’s no secret files. I mean, if they’re secret, I hold a security clearance. If they are secret from me then, they must be at some other level of classification,” he said.
Public health experts have objected to Kennedy’s long record of misleading statements questioning vaccine safety and worry he could upend decades’ worth of hard-fought wins in improving vaccination rates against deadly diseases.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a watchdog group that has often clashed with the FDA, likened the pick to “putting a Flat Earther at the head of NASA.”
Marks, a career civil servant who played a key role in launching the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, says he has “sat in the room” across from Kennedy when vaccines were discussed multiple times.
While he said he worries that spending time “re-litigating things that we know work” could undermine other important FDA efforts — and could be potentially deadly during a future pandemic if it further erodes confidence in vaccines — Marks also said that working with RFK Jr. could turn out to have a silver lining.
“Perhaps engaging in that dialogue, especially if it’s in a public venue, it may help. It may help bring some of the rest of the country along because sometimes as somebody is convinced, perhaps, maybe some of the rest of the country will be,” he said.
Greg Nash/The Hill/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Marks rejected Kennedy’s claims that the FDA is filled with corrupt officials who need to be fired, stressing that the staff is dedicated to protecting Americans’ health. Marks said he hopes to keep his job under Trump and Kennedy, and to protect the team at his center.
“They do what they do to protect the American people. Not for any kind of nefarious purpose. And during the COVID pandemic, people worked 14 hours a day,” Marks said of the agency’s staff.
Kennedy has vowed to end what he calls the agency’s “war on public health,” warning workers who are “part of this corrupt system” to “pack your bags.”
He has also specifically pledged to fire all of the nutritional scientists at the FDA and other agencies on his first day, accusing them of being co-opted by corporate interests.
“I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth,” Kennedy posted Thursday on X.
Asked about Kennedy’s scientific expertise, Marks said he thought Kennedy’s understanding is “not as deep as others,” but added, “I know a number of attorneys who know more than most PhDs and MDs about medicine. So it’s not the degree. It’s just a matter of keeping an open mind.”
While Kennedy’s pick for the role was just announced on Thursday, health officials have been bracing for the possibility for a while. During the campaign, Trump vowed he’d let Kennedy to “go wild” on health if he won.
“President Trump wants to see, has told me, he wants to see concrete, measurable diminishment in chronic disease within two years,” Kennedy said on Nov. 9.
Kennedy says he has called on Trump to declare an emergency to counter chronic disease, supercharging his authority to address what he sees as the root causes of the federal government’s failure to address rising rates of a range of ailments from autism to obesity.
“In order to do that, we need to operate very, very quickly. And we need to treat this with the same kind of urgency that we did, the COVID epidemic. This is a thousand times worse than COVID,” Kennedy said.