As 2022 winds down and we look toward 2023, there's a lot that Americans would probably prefer not to carry over into the new year. But inflation and high gas prices are two things that, unfortunately, won't be going anywhere thanks to the Biden administration's policies.
This unwelcome news comes from the analysts at GasBuddy in their end of year preview for 2023 and what Americans can expect to find at the pump.
"The national average price of gas could cool early in the year as demand remains seasonally weak," GasBuddy's forecast explains, "followed by a rise that starts in late winter, bringing prices to the $4 per gallon range in time for summer."
As our readers surely recall, last summer saw the national average gas price in the United States reach their all-time highs in June of $5.016 per gallon for unleaded and $5.816 for diesel as recorded by AAA.
Well, the summer of 2023 might not bring the national average up to $5/gallon for unleaded again, but GasBuddy warned that as "most major U.S. cities will see prices top around $4 per gallon" as winter turns to spring, "areas of California like San Francisco and Los Angeles could again experience near $7 gas prices again in the summer of 2023 if refineries struggle under mandates of unique formulations of gasoline."
As Townhall reported earlier in 2022, California's Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom tried to blame the refineries and gas companies for high gas prices in his state, but got slapped down by Valero which explained that Democrat policies mandating different formulations of fuel were actually to blame.
Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, explained "2023 is not going to be a cakewalk for motorists. It could be expensive." In Joe Biden's America, that's almost entirely taken for granted. "Basically, curveballs are coming from every direction," De Haan emphasized. "Extreme amounts of volatility remain possible, but should become slightly more muted in the year ahead. I don’t think we’ve ever seen such an amount of volatility as we saw this year, and that will be a trend that likely continues to lead to wider uncertainty over fuel prices going into 2023," he added.
Most of that volatility De Haan mentioned is a direct result of President Biden's policies. Since taking office and killing off American energy independence, the United States oil and fuel market is subject to the whims and actions of foreign nations, many of which would like to kill us, but we pay them for their oil anyway because we don't have a domestic alternative anymore.
Additional volatility comes as a result of President Biden's decision to drain a significant amount of the supply kept in America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, normally kept in case of natural disasters or other emergencies not of the president's own making. The week Biden took office, the SPR had inventories totaling 638,086,000 barrels. As of the week ending December 16, 2022, the SPR has just 378,624,000 barrels. That leaves the United States with the lowest emergency oil stockpile since the week of December 23, 1983.
With GasBuddy's forecast warning that $4/gallon gas will soon be back hitting Americans' wallets in 2023, things aren't looking great in terms of relief from elevated prices at the pump. But with President Biden and the rest of his administration in charge, Americans should prepare for an even worse reality.
Just remember: the pain is the point. It's all part of Biden's plan to force an "energy transition" that will "decarbonize" the United States and end fossil fuels.