Consumers hit as global gasoline prices soar

High demand

Natural gas has become increasingly popular in recent years as nations and utilities have turned to it to replace coal. While it is still a fossil fuel, natural gas burns cleaner than coal. It also can help countries meet commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions attributed to climate change.

Demand has been high recently in Europe and Asia, neither of which previously were major natural gas users. Now, their increased demand is straining supply.

De Haan said: "Challenges in feeding power plants enough coal has China buying plenty of natural gas, oil and coal. And in Europe, the natural gas shortage is boosting oil demand as well, simply because so much electricity can be produced from natural gas. And with the natural gas shortage boosting prices, many are switching to crude oil."

Another issue for the natural gas market is that the US does not have enough export facilities, pipelines and storage to quickly increase capacity.

Dicker said: "The trouble is that it's a long-horizon deal, then you have to go to LNG (liquefied natural gas). You'll see that there's very few export terminals and very few players, because unless you have been engaged in building export plants 10 years ago… there's nobody who's going to take advantage of that."

Energy companies have been rethinking whether they want to continue pouring money into fossil fuel production amid a political shift away from carbon-emitting energy.

Dicker said the oil giants were politically concerned with producing "dirty crude".

"The weird part about this is most of the big majors have been crying uncle for the last year, saying, 'We're going to become renewable energy companies.' Shell, less than a month ago sold all their shale assets to ConocoPhillips for a song. Conoco's stock is headed back to its 52-week high," he said.

Stephen Myrow, managing partner of Beacon Policy Advisors and a former US Treasury official, told CNBC: "Politically speaking, Democrats need the economy to be going as well as it can. At the same time, (Biden) has prioritized climate change and clean energy, and inevitably there's conflict between those priorities."

De Haan said: "Hostility toward the oil sector … may be limiting the ability for oil producers to raise production. So there are some political factors that weigh in as well. I would say that President Biden's moratorium on new drilling on federal land and the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline are future issues. They are currently not primary drivers of this."

Three phases of the Keystone Pipeline System running between Canada and the US have been completed. A fourth was canceled this year.

"Really, the bulk of what we're facing is because of COVID keeping Americans home and keeping global demand down at the onset of the pandemic," de Haan said. "But now with vaccinations increasing, there has been a significant amount of pent-up demand."

Meanwhile, a service station on the Big Sur coast in California was charging $7.59 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline last week and nearly $8.50 for premium, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Signs at the station, located on a remote stretch of picturesque Highway 1 in Monterey County, warn: "Next gas 40 miles (64 kilometers) north, 12 miles south."

In Los Angeles and Orange counties, motorists are paying about $19 more to fill their tanks than they were a year ago.

AAA spokesman Doug Shupe told the Los Angeles Times: "Typically, we start to see prices go down after Labor Day (the first Monday in September) because people have wrapped up their summer road trips. But this year is different … more people want to get out there to share the open roads with friends and family."

Gasoline has always cost more in California than in elsewhere in the US because of higher taxes and environmental fees.

UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein told the Los Angeles Times that since 1996, cleaner-burning gasoline has cost more, but has led to cleaner skies.

"Forty years ago, you couldn't see the mountains in Los Angeles," he said. "Now you can."

De Haan said: "Early in the pandemic, Americans started working from home, globally as well, where possible telecommuting has risen to reduce oil consumption. And you compare this to, say, the oil embargo in the '70s …where the US started to increase more of its own oil production.

"I don't know that the US will see a meaningful rebound of oil production for quite some time, but you know we've seen nothing like COVID-19 … where essentially, overnight, oil demand plummeted," he said.

"So, it's creating a lot of imbalances; the fact that there was such a rapid decline in the price of and demand for crude oil, and now there's been a rapid return of demand.

"We've never really seen something significantly change consumer behavior so much, and then to see demand come back at such a quick pace has been fairly shocking."

The World Bank has signaled that energy prices likely will continue to rise following a surge of more than 80 percent this year, a trend expected to extend well into the second half of next year.