The average price that consumers paid at the pump for U.S. regular gasoline on the Monday before Thanksgiving this year was $3.40 per gallon (gal). This price is $1.29/gal (62%) higher than last year and is the highest pre-Thanksgiving price since 2012 (in nominal terms), according to our latest Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update. U.S. gasoline prices are 82 cents/gal (32%) higher than at the same time in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. October 2021 saw the largest recorded year-over-year increase in gasoline prices, at $1.13/gal, since we began collecting gasoline prices in 1990.

Over the past decade, major utilities in the United States have been spending more on delivering electricity to customers and less on producing that electricity.

Between 2022 and 2025, 27.3 gigawatts (GW) of new natural gas-fired capacity is scheduled to come online in the United States, according to our latest . This added capacity would increase current capacity (489.1 GW as of August 2021) by 6%. Many of the planned natural gas-fired capacity additions are located close to major shale plays in the Appalachia region, in Texas, and in Florida.

In October 2021, we began publishing expanded data on biofuels other than ethanol in our (MER), including production, imports, feedstocks, and consumption. The expanded biofuels data provide a more detailed look at fuels previously grouped under renewable fuels except ethanol, which is now split into biodiesel, renewable diesel, and other biofuels.

Since the third quarter of 2020, global consumption of crude oil and petroleum products has increased faster than production, which has caused lower inventory levels and higher crude oil prices. In our November Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that rising production from OPEC+ countries and the United States will lead to global liquid fuels inventories increasing and crude oil prices falling in 2022.