Gas Prices Hit 2023 High but Remain Far Below 2022 Peak
Gas has reached its highest average price since late 2022, according to data from AAA, hitting a national average of $3.75 per gallon on Sunday for regular unleaded gasoline.
You might think that all the summer driving is behind higher prices, but compared to 2022 or 2021, demand is "tepid," said AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross.
Instead, it's lower supply that's driving prices upward. Last month, Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC+ producer, said it will continue through August the 10% cut (1 million barrels per day) that it began in July. Russia said it will cut an additional 500,000 barrels per day in August, according to Russian news reports.
Extreme heat across the U.S. has also constrained supplies, said Gross, by lowering the amount of oil that refineries can turn into gasoline.
While gas prices are 20 cents higher than in June, they are still well below the $4.23 per gallon paid a year ago, or the all-time high of $5.01 in mid-June 2022.
As gas prices climbed higher Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed an 18% increase in the fuel economy of new vehicles. If adopted, automakers would need their fleets to average 43.5 miles per gallon by 2032, compared to the existing standard of 36.75 miles per gallon that fleets must average by 2026.
Reaching even the lower standards will be a big climb from current fuel economy of new vehicles, which was 25.4 miles per gallon for the 2021 model year, according to the EPA.
Between corporate debt and the widening gap between ‘the haves and the have nots,’ there are reasons to be cautious about the economy, even with interest rate cuts on their way.
If the A.I. hype hasn’t given you enough of a reason to be excited (and a little terrified), the CEO of Zapata AI says the next frontier is designing bridges or creating pharmaceutical drugs.
Stocks are near record highs, inflation is moderating, and analyst Deiya Pernas is 'optimistic' the U.S. is heading for a soft landing without a recession – which is good news for your wallet.
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin loved pulling pranks, so much so they began rolling outlandish ideas every April Fools' Day not long after starting their company more than a quarter century ago.
Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded the FTX crypto exchange in 2019 and quickly built it into the world’s second most popular place to trade digital currency. It collapsed almost as quickly — by the fall of 2022, it was bankrupt.
The economic effects of the Baltimore bridge collapse, Americans are living longer but not better, and Gen Z and millennials are struggling to afford rent, let alone a mortgage.