Pain at the pump: When could gas prices go down?

Every driver is feeling the pinch from high gas prices.

On Tuesday, gas prices were hovering around $4.40 a gallon in the Dayton area.

“Even with my little car here, I got to put in a good $40 to $50 dollars every couple of days,” said Dayton resident, Sean Chapman.

News Center 7 looked into if there is any relief on the way, or is this the new normal for a fill-up?

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“Unfortunately, I don’t have any better news. It’s going to be higher and so we’re going to have to learn to conserve,” said Cedarville University Professor Jeff Haymond, who has has a PHD in economics.

Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst with GasBuddy, says gas prices will fall “at some point.”

“That some point may be, you know, a year or two down the line,” De Haan said.

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Both men say lower supply, with sanctions removing Russian oil from the global market, and increasing and inflationary demand spells a pricey summer for filling your tank.

“I think we’ll be stuck in the $4.00 a gallon range most of the summer unless there’s an economic slowdown or improvement in the situation between Russia and Ukraine,” De Haan said.

Haymond says he fears the recession scenario later this year.

“This isn’t a positive: the relief that you could get is if we have a global recession this fall,” Haymond said. He added that high prices could help address the supply problem.

“One of the things economists like to say is the cure for high prices is high prices. And what we mean by that is the high prices do eventually cause the incentive for people get out and create more energy,” Haymond said.

This is an an effect De Haan says he’s tracking right now.

“U.S. oil production continues to slowly rise, closer back to where it was pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, U.S. oil production was about 13.2 million barrels a day. We dropped to about 10 million barrels a day. Now we’re back to up 11.9 million barrels so the U.S. oil production is going up,” De Haan said.

De Haan also said another positive production sign is that there’s 234 more U.S. oil rigs online compared to this time last year.

You can find the cheapest gas near you here.

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