Gas prices are an explosive topic worldwide currently, and understandably so, prices are up everywhere. For simplicity’s sake, we will be converting everything to gallon prices (3.785 Litres in a Gallon). Research by globalpetrolprices.com showed that the worldwide average cost per gallon was 4.61USD as of Jan 3rd, 2022. Comparatively the US sits at 3.2USD, Canada at 4.2USD, China at 4.5USD, the UK at 7.4USD, Kuwait at 1.1USD, Russia at 2.74USD, #Syria at 1.19USD. The breadth of these prices is large. There is a generally understood rule that wealthier countries pay more for gasoline than poorer and oil-exporting nations. There are obviously exceptions, such as the #UnitedStates. Typically everyone has the same oil prices on the international market, the prices are influenced by a variety of things such as taxes, subsidies, supply, demand, distribution, and more.
In the US prices are at a seven-year high, but why? It is a mixed bag, but more or less it is about supply and demand. During the pandemic, we saw dramatic drops all the way down to 1.7USD a gallon, which was great, but there was no demand. When restrictions are lifted and people are out and about – they need that black gold. During the pandemic oil producers worldwide slowed production, they could not predict demand. In the US, production was also halted by hurricanes such as Ida in 2021, and Delta and Zeta in 2020. So this is forcing us to go deeper and deeper into our oil reserves, and since the international community (OPEC) is not dramatically increasing oil output as well, we will continue to experience high gas prices likely through the summer. OPEC aims to return to pre-pandemic level production.
