When will gas prices go down? The answer may discourage you

Is there an end in sight to the high gas prices?

That’s the million-dollar question, said Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy.

De Haan said significant gas price increases are expected to continue through the first part of this week, but there are signs that the rate of increase could slow by the end of the week. “The biggest of increases are maybe behind us,” he said. “I could say likely, but oil markets are very volatile.”

A slowdown in the price increase is promising, but when will we actually start to see a drop?

De Haan told SFGATE that he doesn’t see a drop coming yet, if at all, noting that California’s average could near $6 — and an increasing number of stations in the Golden State may charge over $8 a gallon. 

“We really don’t know at this point what will happen and what escalation could happen next to drive oil prices up again,” de Haan said in a video news update posted on Facebook. “And when could this peak? Again, these are really tough questions to accurately answer because the situation is unfolding. We could think that this week will peak, and then next week there could be something else that completely changes the situation. It’s hard to give any assurances on where we’re going, how high we’ll get and when we’ll get there.”

Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, echoed this sentiment.

“I cannot tell you when gasoline prices will start to decline, because I can’t tell you when crude oil prices will,” Borenstein wrote in an email. “And anyone who claims they can, you should be highly suspicious of. It all depends on whether Russia continues its aggression in Ukraine and how the U.S. and Western Europe choose to punish Russia for that. I continue to hope that Putin will see that this is not worth the damage he’s doing to Russia and will figure out a way to declare victory and pull back, but that isn’t looking likely.”

The price of crude oil drives the cost of gas and it has risen dramatically as the U.S. and other countries impose sanctions on Russia, removing millions of barrels from the global supply. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported President Joe Biden will ban Russian oil imports. The supply crunch is putting pressure on a market that was already squeezed as demand rebounded after a lull during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

AAA spokesperson Aldo Vazquez said the price of a barrel of oil was about $60 in August and last month was hovering around $90 a barrel for several weeks. After the invasion of Ukraine, it rose to $100, and this week it’s over $115 a barrel. In early trading on Tuesday, the price of crude had already soared to over $127 a barrel.

“Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, the United States and its allies have imposed more significant financial sanctions on Russia,” Vazquez told SFGATE last week. “Russia is retaliating by keeping away its oil from the global oil market, and that is having significant impact on the price of crude oil.”