The Gas Price

In the early 1990s, I started recording when I bought gas on road trips.  Around 2000, that habit expanded to every time I filled the tank.  Thus, I have a long record of gas prices on hand.  Obviously, it only represents the price where I happened to be, not the average price across the nation.  Still, it is a useful metric to see how the price ebbs and flows.  Here is a graph that represents my Honda Civic, purchased in December of 2010.

The prices was on the high side for much of Obama's presidency, but it fell during his last two years in office.  Trump saw a rise for a couple years before a dip in his last year.  Biden has mostly seen an increase in gas prices.  Based on my chart, who oversaw the lowest gas price?

I paid $3.90 just this week and expect I will pay more in the weeks to come.  This chart may give an overall figure, but it isn't entirely fair.  The gas price in Obama's last couple of years could be presumed to carry-on.  Let's break it down by year.

Obama's last two years were better than most of Trump's years.  On the other hand, Trump did achieve energy independence by his final year and it shows.  Trump was a proponent of American energy production, approving pipelines, cheerleading fracking and drilling, and hyping domestic sources.  The US became an energy exporter for the first time in my lifetime during the Trump Administration.  As such, it is not surprising that he had the lowest average cost per gallon during his tenure.  Of course, 78 cents a gallon isn't a lot, is it?  What was my average cost per tank of gas?

Biden has repeatedly announced his hostility toward fossil fuels and, as one of his first acts as president, he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  Yes, the Ukraine mess is responsible for some of the recent rise in gas prices, but, as the 2021 average price shows, it had increased dramatically (47%) in 2021, before Putin invaded.

Clearly, the policies in place from 2015 through 2020 provided the best prices for gas.  Let's return to those policies.