Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Gas prices up again? What’s going on?

Cash in a gas tak
tzahiV

Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote and political reform director at New America.

I pulled into a gas station near San Francisco, and my eyes popped out of my head: $6 a gallon!

Here we go again, the roller coaster of gas prices. And it’s not just in California. Since January, the national average price has increased 57 cents to $3.66 per gallon, almost a 20 percent increase.

Who or what causes gas prices at the pump to soar like this? Is it Saudi Arabia/OPEC, Russia, inflation, Middle East wars, price gouging by oil companies, paid-off politicians? Like everyone else, usually I just grumble and pay, but this time I got mad and went looking for answers.


First I asked the manager at the gas station. “It’s the price of oil, nothing I can do about it,” he said.

Some quick research verified that, indeed, the price of oil rose recently from $78 per barrel to $85. But that only accounted for about 17 cents of the increase.

So then I looked on the website of the Western States Petroleum Association, a pro-industry trade group. I also searched the website of the Department of Energy. Those two organizations don’t always agree, but both said that there is no single cause of changing gas prices, blaming it on several factors including:

  • The price of raw crude oil, which makes up half the cost at the pump. That price is determined by fluctuating global supply, but also by a global oil cartel, the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which sets oil production quotas for each country to restrict competition and keep the price artificially high.
  • The cost to refine crude oil into gasoline, including occasional refinery production shutdowns, scheduled and unscheduled.
  • Seasonal factors, such as changing from cheaper gas blends used in the winter, leading to a natural price spike in the spring.
  • Spot shortages, sometimes caused by geopolitical tensions. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been significant factors, with crude oil prices now 34 percent higher than pre-Covid averages.
  • Local add-on taxes, which vary state to state.

Further complicating matters, pump prices don’t usually reflect market conditions that day or week, but reflect costs incurred weeks, even months before, making cause and effect harder to track.

Oh boy. It’s getting difficult to find the right group to blame. But the elephant in the room is whether the oil industry is price gouging consumers. Can we figure that out, at least?

The California Energy Commission found that when gasoline prices jumped to $5.70 per gallon in September 2023, the state’s oil refiners more than doubled their 66 cent margin from the previous January, the largest increase ever ... even though crude oil prices and other factors didn’t double. The state’s oil refiners ultimately made three times more than before.

Also, two anti-monopoly lawsuits have been filed recently, which present compelling evidence that the largest U.S. shale oil producers have conspired with OPEC to keep gas prices high.

To many energy experts, this gathering data strongly indicates that oil producers and refiners are gouging consumers. Oil companies hauled in $63 billion in just 90 days. Somehow the oil industry always finds its way to the pig trough.

That’s depressing. Is there nothing President Joe Biden and other elected politicians can do?

In October 2022, Biden mounted the bully pulpit, accusing the oil companies of profiteering during the Ukraine-Russia war. He singled out ExxonMobil, which reported a record $19.7 billion earnings in three months, saying “Exxon made more money than God.”

In addition to applying political pressure and issuing threats to tax the oil companies’ excessive profits, Biden tapped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to release 180 million barrels of oil, the largest release in U.S. history.

Did it work? The price of gas fell from over five dollars to $3.76 per gallon, and naturally the Biden administration took credit. His opponents said prices would have declined anyway.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a first-in-the-nation law to increase transparency through extensive monitoring of oil refiners for excessive profit-making, and authorizing price caps as well as penalties for price gouging. California has the nation’s highest average gas prices at $5.41 per gallon, almost $2 higher than the national average. It requires a cleaner, more expensive fuel blend that only certain refineries can deliver, sometimes leading to production shortages. Californians value having cleaner air, but they pay a premium price for it.

And so it goes. My conclusion? Gas prices come and go like the weather. Fortunately current prices are below last summer's prices, and well below the record high in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove the national average to over $5 per gallon. So that’s progress.

Yes, there is certainly price-gouging going on, because the magnitude and timing of the profit surge is too much of a coincidence to believe otherwise. But it’s hard to say how much, or to legally prove it.

And while refinery production shortages and winter/summer blending issues can drive up gas prices locally, nationwide price swings are almost always due to the OPEC-driven global prices for oil. It’s misleading to blame a president for large price spikes when that phenomenon is happening around the world.

So given all these complex factors, here’s my prediction for gas prices: It’s just like with the weather — highs tonight, lows tomorrow and precipitation is expected.

Read More

Tariff ‘Mission Accomplished’ Hype Is Just That

In an aerial view, a container ship arrives at the Port of Oakland on Aug. 1, 2025, in Oakland, California.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/TNS

Tariff ‘Mission Accomplished’ Hype Is Just That

On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush announced, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” He was standing below a giant banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” At the risk of inviting charges of understatement, subsequent events didn’t cooperate. But it took a while for that to be widely accepted.

We’re in a similar place when it comes to President Trump’s experiment with a new global trading order.

Keep ReadingShow less
Back to School Shopping? Expect Higher Prices, “Invisible” to the Consumer

AI-driven "surveillance pricing" hides the price increases from stressed-out parents.

Getty Images, Isabel Pavia

Back to School Shopping? Expect Higher Prices, “Invisible” to the Consumer

For families with school children, the summer is coming to a close, and it’s time to start thinking about—school shopping! New clothes, shoes, daypacks, and school supplies are topmost of mind, making sure your little Einsteins and Rembrandts are ready to take on the new school year.

But this year, it’s coming with a twist—not only are prices higher in the stores and online, but the price increases are seemingly “invisible” due to deceptive uses of new technologies and what is known as “surveillance pricing.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Celebrating National Black Business Month

National Black Business Month is about correcting an imbalance and recognizing that supporting Black-owned businesses is suitable for everyone.

Getty Images, Tara Moore

Celebrating National Black Business Month

Every August, National Black Business Month rolls around, and for a few weeks, social media lights up with hashtags and well-meaning posts about supporting Black-owned businesses. You'll see lists pop up—restaurants, bookstores, clothing lines—all run by Black entrepreneurs. Maybe your favorite coffee shop puts up a sign, or a big brand launches a campaign. But once the month ends, the noise fades, and for many, it's back to business as usual.

This cycle is familiar. It's easy to mistake visibility for progress or to think that a single purchase is enough. But National Black Business Month is meant to be more than a fleeting moment of recognition. It's a moment to interrogate the systems that got us here and to put our money—and our intent—where our mouths are. In a better world, Black business success would be a given, not a cause for annual celebration.

Keep ReadingShow less
How Abnormal Are the Revisions in This Month’s Jobs Report?

Seasonally adjusted data. Graph excludes March to August 2020, initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the reported jobs numbers were especially volatile. Shows difference between the preliminary estimate and the final revision for each month. Includes initial revision for June 2025 (BLS often issues a second revision).

How Abnormal Are the Revisions in This Month’s Jobs Report?

On Friday, President Trump announced that he was firing Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Earlier that day the BLS had issued its monthly national jobs report, which showed lackluster growth in employment, and a slight uptick in the unemployment rate.

The report showed a relatively small increase in employment for July: +73,000 nonfarm payroll jobs. The BLS also included revisions to the preliminary jobs numbers reported earlier, stating: “Revisions for May and June were larger than normal. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 125,000, from +144,000 to +19,000, and the change for June was revised down by 133,000, from +147,000 to +14,000.”

Keep ReadingShow less