Experts say the OPEC+ oil cartel’s shock decision to slash production will make the next few months “pretty painful for drivers” — and wide-eyed motorists are already reeling from sticker shock.
“Here we go again,” Vincent Bruno, 50, said Tuesday morning as he gassed up his sedan at a Sunoco on Queens Boulevard in Briarwood, where a gallon of regular costs $3.60. “It’s not a huge hike, but it’s just enough to get you where it hurts. They don’t care about the little guy.”
Miguel Reyes, a 44-year-old bus driver from Kew Gardens, Queens, said he thought prices were dropping until he reached his local Shell station, where it was listed at $3.46 per gallon.
“It is a burden — a few more dollars, it adds up,” Reyes said. “That money has to come from somewhere else. Maybe I buy the lower-priced ice cream for my kids or the lower-priced cereal that they don’t like.”
And it will likely only get worse.
With its Sunday decision to suddenly chop production by more than a million barrels a day, the powerful oil cartel — which counts Russia among its members — immediately drove up the price of a barrel of Brent crude from about $77 on March 31 to $81 on April 3.
There were instant consequences at the pump.
On Tuesday, a gallon of gas went for about $3.50 per gallon nationwide, according to AAA’s online tracker.
That’s up from $3.43 a week ago, and $3.39 a month ago, AAA said.
Wall Street observers have said that the OPEC+ cuts could eventually push the price beyond $100 a barrel, which would certainly drive up per-gallon rates and frustrate American drivers still aching from last year’s record-high gas prices.
This could lead to hikes of roughly 26 cents per gallon, according to Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC.
That’s on top of the usual seasonal increase that happens when refineries switch to their summer blend of gasoline. The Energy Department calculates that at about 32 cents per gallon, Book said.
“It’s fair to say that this is going to be pretty painful for drivers for the next couple of months,” Robert Sinclair, spokesman for AAA Northeast, told The Post. “I just feel sorry for the consumers, the folks who can’t afford these fluctuating gasoline prices.”
But Sinclair was reluctant to speculate how high prices could rise in the delicate oil market, which is overly sensitive to global events such as the Ukraine war, refinery capacity in Venezuela and China’s demand for fuel, among other things.
“I think there will be an initial bump in prices, but how high? Hard to say,” Sinclair said. “It’s not something that changes month by month, or week by week, or even day by day. It’s minute by minute.”
Still, the price hikes will likely throw a wrench into people’s spring and summer plans, he added.
“The great American family road trip might get shortened as a result,” Sinclair said.
But for others who sit behind the wheel for a living — such as cab driver Mehedi Roy — it’s best not to dwell on the ever-changing gas bill.
“I pay what it costs. What else can I do?” Roy, 30, told The Post on Tuesday at the Queens Boulevard Sunoco. “I spend all my day burning gasoline. If I think about how much it costs, I can get very depressed.”
NYC drivers already feeling pinch of OPEC's 'painful' surprise oil production cuts - New York Post
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