Old North News

This week's Gas Misery Index reported that residents in North Carolina will spend $826 more on gas than they did a year ago.

The average price for a gallon of gas in the country is $4.28, up 12 cents from last week, the index reported. Americans will spend an average of $704 more on gas annually than last year. North Carolinians are paying an average $4.02 per gallon.

The index uses the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline according to AAA and adjusts the data using average miles traveled according to Metromile and average miles per gallon of U.S. cars according to fuel-efficiency data from the Department of Energy. This reveals how much Americans are paying for gas compared to the previous year on average.

"As long as the supply remains tight, it will be hard for crude oil prices to fall and consumers will in turn face higher prices at the pump," Andrew Gross, AAA spokesperson, said on AAA's site. "It now costs drivers in the U.S. about $23 more to fill up than a year ago."

Gas prices rose this week mostly due to the cost of crude oil, which is at roughly $100 a barrel, AAA reported. Gas prices in North Carolina rose an average of 16 cents per gallon since last week, one of the highest seven-day increases out of all 50 states.

When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the usual price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. stood at $2.33, an 84% difference compared with the current average price of $4.28, the Energy Information Administration reported. Americans are spending $1,024 more on gas annually than when he became president.

Biden said in March that he was tapping into the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to release $180 million barrels of crude oil over a six-month period in an effort to reduce gas prices, CNN reported. Recently, the administration said it planned to buy 60 million barrels of crude oil in order to replenish the reserve. However, the Energy Department said this will only cover a third of the supply from president's record release and will take years.