The cost of gas in the U.S. has been increasing with prices beating out records set from the 2008 global financial crisis. When looking at AAA’s website the average price of gas in the state of Texas is currently around $4.63 per gallon, with rising inflation impacting the cost of gas this will affect college students who must commute.
The resulting fallout from the Russian-Ukraine War led to global food shortages along with the United States banning all imports of gas coming from Russia. During a press conference held on March 8 President Joe Biden signed an executive order that would target the main artery of Russia’s economy.
According to the official White House press statement the executive order will ban the importation into the United States of Russian crude oil, certain petroleum products, liquefied natural gas, and coal.
“It’s not the first time we sort of economically targeted a country’s oil market,” said Stephen Cotten, professor of energy economics when discussing the ban. “We’ve imposed sanctions on other countries before, take Iran, we’ve made it difficult for Iran to sell its oil into markets.”
This is not the United States’ first time dealing with oil embargos, when Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) issued an embargo against the United States in retaliation for its decision to re-supply its allies in Israel the country faced economic crisis for the next two years.
With the ongoing conflict and Biden’s ban on Russian oil the country has seen a spike in national gas prices. From the AAA’s website the national average price of gas as around $4.96 as of June 21.
Looking at AAA website we can see the top five states with the highest prices of gas being California, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon.
While the price of gas is on the rise, the question of how long this price increase will last, Cotten explained “I think you might see over the next couple of years at least them heading back down towards you know, say, the lower to mid-$3 per gallon.”
To help alleviate the population from paying more at the gas pump the Biden administration has issued the sale of thirty million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. From May to June one million barrels of oil will be released per day for over six months to stabilize the market.
“It could moderate things temporarily but in markets that you know are pricing oil in advance, you know lots of contracts are done and futures markets where people are buying and selling,” Cotten said. “The rights to oil months and months down the road, and so they know, in the long run it’s not new oil, like its oil that would have to be replaced, and so it tends to have a pretty modest effect on oil prices.”
While the U.S. is currently trying to alleviate the burden high gas prices college students who must travel to school are starting to feel the effects of the surge in prices. From UHCL’s facts and statistics page, for the year 2021 there was approximately 9,383 students on campus that year. While the number for this semester has not been released, there is still a large presence of the student body on campus.
The parking department of UHCL has also given the estimated number of parking passes sold for the summer semester. The number was around 250 passes, the final number will not be accounted for until the end of the summer semester in July and the number for the fall semester being unaccounted for.
Erica Morales, a Mathematical science and Biological Science major commutes around fifteen minutes to get too campus and spends around seventy dollars to fully fill up her car.
“I sometimes carpool with friends when we have classes on the same day” said Morales. Her major requires her to be on campus four days a week in the summer and five during the fall for labs.
For Fall 2022, UHCL will offer 28% of its courses in an online modality and 28% in a hybrid modality.