Andrew Gross, the national spokesman for AAA Inc., predicted higher gas prices will last throughout the summer.
He told Fox News, “Demand is up.”
Gross added, “Typically this time of year we are in a little bit of a lull. There is often a demand lull between spring break and Memorial Day and we had a little bit of it about two weeks ago, but then last week, … there was actually an increase, which is very unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”
He explained, “You have this increased demand as well as these really elevated oil prices.”
Gross noted “the price of oil has been stuck in this weird range of $100 a barrel to $110 a barrel.”
According to Gross, “It meets resistance when it hits $110 and then it drops back down, but then it meets resistance to drop below $100 and so it’s in this uncomfortably high area.”
He pointed out, back in August, “A barrel of oil was about $64 so we’re $40 plus more and that’s putting a lot of upward pressure because oil accounts for about 60% of the cost of what you pay at the pump, so the more expensive the oil, the more expensive the gasoline.”
The spokesman compared gas prices to the stock market, adding, “We’ve seen the stock market all over the place.”
Additionally, Gross told Fox News “a lot of the downward pressure recently in the oil market was due to COVID and all these fears in China about China locking down because any kind of economic slowdown in China really effects oil because China is really the world’s largest consumer of oil.”
“So if they start consuming less, that’s more oil for everybody else,” Gross said.
When it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Gross said it is “the prime generator for all these upward prices because the war has just injected all this weird volatility into the market.”
Last month, President Joe Biden blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the hike in gas prices.
“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world,” Biden said.
He added, “So everything is going up. We saw it in today’s inflation data. Seventy percent of the increase in prices in March came from Putin’s price hike in gasoline.”
According to AAA, the current average price for a gallon of gas is $4.59.
This is up from $3.04 the year prior.