By Karen Stokes
Bharat Ramamurti, Director of the National
Economic Council. (Photo/Reuters)
If you’ve been to the gas pumps lately, you may have noticed a dip in gas prices.
“Gas prices have been coming down. If you look at the national average data, they’ve come down 80 cents a gallon in the last seven weeks. The average price is below $4,” said Bharat Ramamurti, Director of the National Economic Council.
According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), gas demand increased in recent weeks while inventory levels dropped, which could pressure pump prices and slow price decreases if the trend holds. Yet for now, prices continue to drop, said AAA.
“To predict the future is difficult, there’s a lot of things that can affect globally the price of oil, but if you look at expert projections about the price of gas in the U.S. a lot of experts are predicting that gas prices will continue to go down for the next several weeks,” said Ramamurti.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, gas prices have increased. Both Russia and Ukraine are big oil producing nations and the war has had an impact on global oil supply.
Gas prices have gone down an average of 80 cents in the last seven weeks
(Photo/Karen Stokes)
“The President ordered the single largest release of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, 180 million barrels of oil,” Ramamurti said.
A recent report found that action alone by the President helped bring the prices down by about 40 cents a gallon.
“Since the President took office we learned unexpected things happen and it can have an effect on our economy. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that Russia would have invaded Ukraine which caused all sorts of chaos globally in financial markets,” Ramamurti said.
The question many have asked is, are the gas prices an indication of a recession in the future?
“Where we sit right now, if you look at how our households are doing, our consumers feel comfortable spending money. Businesses feel good about putting out a big investment, creating new factories and hiring new workers. The answer to all this is, that’s not what you typically see in a recession,” Ramamurti said.