People wait in line to purchase gas at the Fuel Depot gas station in Goleta on Sunday.
The national average for a gallon of gas is $4.12, down from $4.09 a week ago and $4.24 a month ago. However, the national average is up significantly from a year ago, when the average cost was $2.89.
In California, the statewide average is $5.688. In Santa Barbara County the average is $5.803, Ventura County is at $5.817, Los Angeles County is at $5.788, just below San Luis Obispo County which sits at $5.887.
The decline that we have seen over the last month is due to the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. On March 31, President Joe Biden announced the largest release of oil reserves in history. This release has put an additional one million barrels of oil on the market every day, on average for the next six months.
“The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time. This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as a bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up,” according to the press release issued by the White House.
The revenue generated by the release will be used by the Department of Energy (DOE) to restock the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for future years.
“This will provide a signal of future demand and help encourage domestic production today, and will ensure the continued readiness of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to respond to future emergencies,” according to the press release.
According to Patrick De Hann, senior Petroleum Analyst at GasBuddy, the national average is up four cents a gallon as of Friday and could continue to rise.
Mr. De Hann tweeted on Sunday that according to the weekly data from GasBuddy, the U.S. demand for gasoline fell 0.8% from the week before but is 2.9% higher than the average of the last four weeks.
Gasoline inventories on the West Coast saw a decline of half a million standard barrels of oil, accounting for much of the rise in prices, according to a report by GasBuddy. Refinery output and utilization on the West Coast is at 84%, down 0.4%, which also accounts for a portion of the increase.
Total oil stocks in the U.S. are down 144 million standard barrels of oil (-11.2%) and stand at 1.143 billion barrels, not including the Strategic Oil Reserve.
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
